Benefits Supervisor Sleeping is a 1995 oil on canvas painting by Lucian Freud depicting an obese, naked woman lying on a couch. It is a portrait of Sue Tilley, then weighing about 127 kg, a Job Centre supervisor. Tilley is the author of a biography of the Australian performer Leigh Bowery titled “Leigh Bowery, The Life and Times of an Icon”. Tilley was introduced to Freud by Bowery, who was already modelling for him. Freud painted a number of large portraits of her around the period 1994-96, and came to call her "Big Sue". He said of her body "It's flesh without muscle and it has developed a different kind of texture through bearing such a weight-bearing thing"., The painting held the world record for the highest price paid for a painting by a living artist, of US$33.6 million (£17.2 million). It was sold at Christie's in New York in May 2008 to Roman Abramovich.
Famous quotes containing the words benefits, supervisor and/or sleeping:
“One of the benefits of a college education is, to show the boy its little avail.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“We work harder than ever, and I cannot see the advantages in cooperative living.”
—Lydia Arnold, U.S. commune supervisor (of the North American Phalanx, Red Bank, New Jersey, 1843- 1855)
“I heard the hissing rustle of the liquid and sands as directed to
me whispering to congratulate me,
For the one I love most lay sleeping by me under the same cover in the cool night,
In the stillness in the autumn moonbeams his face was inclined
toward me,
And his arm lay lightly around my breast—and that night I
was happy.”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)