MAN FRIDAY: October 2019

Paul Gauguin self portrait

Lucian Freud self-portrait

One had between fourteen and forty children. No-one - probably least of all the man himself - knows exactly how many. The other approached double figures but nobody is quite certain and DNA has been used by those who claim descent from him. Both men regarded the bringing up of their children as being the job of their mothers and both have exhibitions this autumn in London, which demand to be seen. Your eyes cannot avoid being drawn to their paintings when you see them in an art gallery.

Lucian Freud was a grandson of Sigmund and brother of the politician Clement (with whom he did not get along). He had little time for family loyalty and the concept of fidelity to one woman became increasingly alien as his life went on. There were two marriages, numerous mistresses and several short liaisons, some of which produced children as he eschewed any form of contraception, which he considered ‘sordid’. He gave little if any financial support to his offspring yet he seems to have been a half-decent father, who was even something of a fun figure for some of his children, although he could never be mistaken for a reliable bread-winner.

Paul Gauguin did make an attempt at being a responsible husband and father but art took precedence and his inability to make it pay cost him the affection of his strong-minded Danish wife Mette and, eventually, contact with the five children he had with her. He probably reached double figures through various mistresses he lived with when he went to live in Tahiti and there are those who today quite proudly trace their lineage back to him.

Why do I seem to be spending so much time on their domestic arrangements when it is their art that both are known for? If it was not for that they would both be forgotten by all except their families and remembered by them as a feckless if occasionally entertaining presence.

Not being a creator myself (except in writing occasional pieces like these) I overcompensate by taking my parental responsibilities seriously, making sure I provide for my children (now grandchildren as well) and spend some but not too much time with them. You can swamp your kids if you do not set them free to lead independent lives, which can be as bad as ignoring and neglecting them. This is not entirely unselfish on my part. I have a ridiculous need to see some grandchildren to continue the line – something my brothers have not yet produced – and need the first generation to find their own feet so that they can establish and continue the line on their own without me. Safe to say, that did not occur to these two artists, who live on more through their paintings than their progeny (which was plentiful).

It is a mistake to confuse creativity and goodness. You think that having a clear eye might help you to avoid mistakes, but it just means you see them and the people who make them more clearly, not that you avoid the mistakes or selfishness. And both Gauguin and Freud were very selfish. We can disapprove of their cavalier treatment of the women and children in their lives but you cannot walk through an art gallery without being grabbed by the portraits they produced, often of naked women they had just had sex with - or were about to.

Graham Greene said that there was a splinter of ice in the heart of all great writers – and the same is true of other types of artists. Greene left his own wife and children after about twenty years of marriage and spent the rest of his life with various women, having little contact with the family he deserted, although he did provide financial support for them. Despite, or maybe because of this selfishness, he continued to produce brilliant melancholy novels for the rest of his life. His heroes are fallible men who fail at family life, just as he did.

For people like me, who will never produce great works of art, being half successful at parenthood is important. I have said before that you can only offer your children three things – time, money and love – and you can give them too much as well as too little of all three. Neither Gauguin nor Freud gave much to their children except their genes and their name, which they doggedly held onto, and neither was much use as a day-to-day father. In a sense their paintings are their descendants, just as Greene said that his books were his children.

Which would I prefer to produce – books I would be remembered by or children who would remember me with fondness. Children, certainly. But then, it is unlikely I will be remembered for my writing, while my children – and hopefully grandchildren - will go on remembering me.