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Sue Tilley, a former benefits supervisor from London, arrived at a private Sotheby’s auction preview only to experience yet another incredible moment of déjà vu. Right now, her giant nude figure, captured on a canvas weighing nearly 90 pounds, is preparing to go under the hammer for a staggering $33–45 million, CNN reports.

While art critics and the press whispered in awe near the canvas, dissecting the "poetry of the flesh folds," Sue loudly shattered their ecstasy: "Hello! Here I am—in real life!"

How did an ordinary woman without model proportions become the muse of the legendary Lucian Freud (the grandson of Sigmund Freud, the famous psychoanalyst), and why are billionaires so obsessed with buying her portraits?

$50 a Day for Multi-Million Dollar Masterpieces

In the 1990s, when the world was obsessed with "heroin chic" and the extreme thinness of Kate Moss, Lucian Freud was searching for a completely different aesthetic—monumental, honest, and raw. Sue Tilley fit the bill perfectly.

"People think I just walked into a room and we started working on the most expensive painting in the world. It wasn't like that at all," Sue recalls.

She posed for Freud for a very modest daily rate (about £30–£50), while juggling her main job as a civil servant. Over that time, they created four iconic portraits. Sue laughs that she never received a single cent from those canvases. "It's very strange. Sometimes I think: bloody hell, as a painting, I’m probably worth about $100 million. How mental is that!"

And it is the absolute truth: in 2008, her portrait Benefits Supervisor Sleeping fetched $33.6 million at auction, making Freud the most expensive living artist at the time. In 2015, another canvas featuring Sue broke that record, selling to a private collection for $56.2 million.

Fear, Rebellion, and Painted-On Pimples

Sue absolutely detests the word "muse"—she finds it far too sugary. Their sessions were a far cry from romance and required iron endurance. Posing started at 7:30 a.m. Freud worked like a man possessed and rarely took breaks.

"I was thrilled when the phone rang in the studio—it gave me at least a couple of minutes of rest," Tilley shares. "Sometimes I would dose off from exhaustion and dream that Lucian had let me stand up. I’d wake up abruptly, jump up, and he’d scold me. But in the end, I still constantly disobeyed him. I suppose that’s why he liked me."

Sue admits that when she first saw the finished painting, Sleeping by the Lion Carpet, she hated it because the master loved to intensify colors and exaggerate imperfections.

"In reality, I don't have that huge dark bulge on my lower abdomen. If he found a spot or a pimple on my skin, he would paint it immediately. But when it cleared up a week later and a new one appeared in its place, he would paint the new one too, without erasing the old one at all! So that painting is half me, half fiction."

"If I Can Get Butt Naked, Anyone Can"

Today, 30 years later, the world is swept by the "Ozempic" era and a renewed cult of thinness, but Sue takes pride in her curves.

"If everyone in the world looked like matchsticks, it would be boring. I consider myself a champion for plus-size women. They look at my million-dollar portraits and think, 'Well, if she could get stark naked for a great artist, what do I have to be ashamed of?'"

Until now, paintings of Sue have ended up exclusively in the private vaults of the ultra-wealthy—including the collections of Roman Abramovich and British billionaire Joe Lewis. Ahead of the upcoming auction on June 24, the legendary model has only one ultimate wish.

"I want it to be bought by someone who will truly love the painting, rather than just hiding it in some dark vault as an investment. It’s terrible when art just makes money for rich guys in locked cupboards. Please, give it to a gallery so people can come and look at me!"

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