Interior at Paddington

This is a painting of Freud's friend Harry Diamon. Diamond worked at scene-shifting and various other odd jobs and subsequently, in the 1960s, became a photographer. He modelled for this and another smaller picture that is now in the University of Liverpool collections. The setting is a room in Paddington, which at the time was a rundown part of London and where an artist could rent or buy space cheaply in order to set up a studio. The view out of the window is towards a wall that borders the Grand Union Canal. In front of the wall is a small boy staring towards the open window. The red carpet (which in reality had a pattern) was bought by Freud in a junk shop in the Harrow Road. The large plant is of a type related to the yucca. This picture was commissioned in 1951 in connection with The Festival of Britain in 1951 and was Freud's first large-scale painting and his first major public commission.

The pose that Harry Diamond adopts it in essence a mirror-image of the famous aggressive pose that was commonly used by Holbein (1497/8 - 1543) for his full-length portraits of Henry VIII (one such portrait of Henry VIII can be seen in Room 1 in the Walker Art Gallery). However instead of carrying gloves to betoken elegance Harry Diamond has a cigarette in one hand and his clenched fist is heavily nicotine stained. Instead of a rich velvet fur trimmed and silk-embroidered cloak he wears a drab dirty mackintosh. Freud's forthright and slightly seedy figure contrasts with the regal pedigree of the pose.