She earned $35 a day to pose nude in the '90s. Now the painting just sold for $39M — and she won't see a penny of it

The nearly eight-foot-tall canvas, titled “Sleeping by the Lion Carpet,” fetched £29.3 million ($38.8 million) at Sotheby’s London, compared to original projections of $34 million.

The price tag makes it the third-most expensive work ever sold at an auction by the celebrated British artist, Lucian Freud, grandson of famed psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. It was auctioned off by British billionaire Joe Lewis, who also set a record for the most valuable single-owner sale in Europe, earning £296.3 million ($392.6 million USD) the same night.

“Sleeping by the Lion Carpet” had been in Lewis’ collection since he got it from Acquavella Galleries, Freud’s New York rep, in 1996.

“This was a perfect example of what London can do,” international contemporary art dealer Thaddaeus Ropac told the New York Times of the auction. “This was the best sale we’ve had here in years. It showed that if you offer great quality material people will go the extra mile.”

Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, Tilley herself reflected on the surreal attention surrounding the artwork depicting her naked body three decades ago.

“Mona Lisa wasn’t alive when she became famous — but I am,” she said.

A chance introduction changed everything

When Freud first asked Tilley to sit for him in the early 1990s, she was just 35 years old and supervising a London job center. She also worked occasional shifts at Taboo, the legendary nightclub founded by Australian-born artist and performance designer Leigh Bowery.

Bowery had already modeled for Freud and believed Tilley would make an ideal sitter because of her willingness to embrace the unconventional. He introduced the pair, setting in motion a collaboration that would ultimately span several paintings.

Tilley told the Wall Street Journal that their first meeting took place over lunch at London’s River Cafe, where she could “feel his eyes boring into [her] the whole meal.” While she agreed to pose for him because of his fun and comforting character, she admitted to feeling “grotesque” in the images. She also recalled overhearing art aficionados calling her a “poor fat woman” and never expected that a painting of her body would bring in the big bucks.

But Freud was already internationally known for his intensely realistic portraits that celebrated the human body in all its perfect imperfections. Unlike many portrait artists, he rejected idealization and conventional beauty standards, painting subjects exactly how he perceived them. He became known for portraying bodies with striking honesty, challenging preconceived notions of beauty and embracing body diversity long before the body positivity movement gained momentum.

And the market for his work has remained remarkably resilient long after his death in 2011.

“The sexually loaded, penetrating gaze was part of his weaponry, but his art addressed the lives of individuals, whether life models or royalty, with delicacy and disturbing corporeality,” reads his obituary in The Guardian.

His sessions were famously demanding, often lasting hundreds of hours over many months. The result was a body of work that collectors now regard as among the defining achievements of postwar British art.