Sue Tilley

Born in south London,^[1] Tilley worked for performance artist and club promoter Leigh Bowery as a cashier at his "Taboo" night club. Bowery introduced her to Lucian Freud in 1990 and she began posing for him the following year. During this time, she was also a full-time benefits supervisor at the Charing Cross jobcentre, a state-operated employment agency, and she eventually became manager there.^[2]

Freud painted several large nude portraits of Tilley, the first being Evening in the Studio [de] (1993).^[3] Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, painted in 1995, was sold at auction in 2008^[4] for £17 million ($33.6 million US) in New York City.^[5] In 2015, the 1994 painting Benefits Supervisor Resting^[6] sold for £35 million ($56 million US).^[7] A fourth painting, Sleeping by the Lion Carpet, was painted in 1996.^[8] Freud also produced a number of etchings featuring Tilley, including Woman with an Arm Tattoo, which Tilley sold in 2005.^[9]

In 1997, she published Leigh Bowery: The life and times of an Icon, a biography.^[10]

From September 2000 to March 2001, Chief Curator Rolf Lauter at Museum für Moderne Kunst, in Frankfurt, organized the only overview exhibition of Freud's works in a German museum, in close cooperation with the artist. Both the catalog and the invitation as well as the poster included Freud's painting Sleeping by the Lion Carpet^[11] from 1995/96 with Sue Tilley.

In 2015, she had a solo show of paintings and drawings in a London gallery. She did a collaboration with Fendi to decorate luxury clothes and bags with her pictures of desk lamps, bottle openers, banana skins, and cups of coffee.^[7]

In September 2021, Tilley was a guest on the BBC Radio 4 show Saturday Live.^[12]

• "Interviewing Sue Tilley", a long 2023 interview with Tilley via YouTube