You walk up many flights of stairs to reach Celia Paul’s flat, but the climb is worth it. The windows of her studio and bedroom look down on the courtyard and facade of the British Museum. All the world and its history, in every available London light, is just across the street. Paul has lived and painted here – the two things are inseparable in her mind – since 1982, when she discovered this place with Lucian Freud, her then lover and the father of her only child, Frank, also a painter…
Image: Portrait of Celia Paul in her London studio, 2019
Photograph: Antonio Olmos/The Observer
October 27 2019
