The figures and dresses were used as models for scenes painted in the late Highgate artist Paula Rego’s studio, and are on public display for the first time.
Wax crayon nursery tale illustrations, and the eerie work Alice’s Oversized Chair by Rego also feature in Women & Freud, at the father of psychoanalysis’ former Hampstead home.
The house and garden in Maresfield Gardens have been given over to celebrate the women who shaped Freud’s life, from his early patients whom he called his ‘teachers’, to family, friends, colleagues and writers.
Running until May 5, 2025, Women & Freud also features work by women artists who have been inspired by his ideas including Rego, Marie-Louise von Motesiczky, Louise Bourgeois, Sarah Lucas, Rachel Kneebone, Tracey Emin, Cornelia Parker, Alice Anderson, Christina Kimeze, Helen Chadwick, Alison Bechdel, Carolina Mazzolari, Sharon Kivland, Abigail Schama and Emily Berry.
Emin’s neon work, I Whisper to My Past Do I Have Another Choice; Alison Bechdel’s Are You My Mother?; porcelain by Rachel Kneebone; drawings by Cornelia Parker; sculpture by Sarah Lucas; and, in the garden, a 14m painting, Data Dances, by Alice Anderson, are among the works that grapple with Freud’s legacy, including ideas of memory, free association and sexuality.
Co-curators Lisa Appignanesi and Bryony Davies said: “The exhibition reveals how women were the driving force behind psychoanalysis and how Freud’s life and work continue to intrigue women today.
“The combination of a truly exceptional collection of works of art and the unparalleled personal setting make the exhibition a memorable and significant instalment in the continuing story and enduring legacy of Sigmund Freud.”
Exhibits include books, letters, diaries, photographs, sketchbooks and manuscripts displayed in the Freud family home and rooms where Sigmund analysed patients.
Among the women in Freud’s life is Princess Marie Bonaparte, who, in June 1938, helped to organise the family’s escape from Vienna on the Orient Express, as the Nazis advanced through Austria.
The great grand-niece of Napoleon, aunt of the late Duke of Edinburgh and heiress to a fortune, her combination of determination and accessible wealth secured the family’s rescue along with Freud’s library, desk, and world-famous psychoanalytic couch.
The exhibition includes Marie Bonaparte’s childhood notebooks, outlining her dreams, as well as a selection of letters between Bonaparte and Freud, on display for the first time. Other letters on display are between Freud and his wife Martha, and items associated with his pioneering child psychoanalyst daughter Anna.
Virginia Woolf, who came to tea at Maresfield Gardens with husband Leonard and later published his work in English, also features in Women & Freud.
