>> charlie: welcome to the program. we begin this evening with benedict cumberbatch, the star of the new film, the imitation games. >> it was uncompromising. there was no asking to be liked. it's funny and witty in intelligence. then you get embrawled in the mystery of who the man is and the code. and then the de-evolution of the tragedy of his demise. the emotional impact of what injustice he was served and what happened to him in the excruciating reality is only magnified in why didn't i know is this. >> charlie: we conclude with a conversation about the portrait painter lucian freud. we talk with david dawson and

john richardson. >> he was just a very great artist who, to my mind, was the great portraitist of his day. he also had this extraordinary feeling, maybe inherited from his grandfather, of perceiving people's personalities. >> charlie: the acting of benedict cumberbatch and painting of lucian freud, when we continue. >> rose: funding for "charlie rose" has been provided by the following: >> rose: additional funding provided by: >> and by bloomberg, a provider

of multimedia news and information worldwide. captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> charlie: benedict cumberbatch is here, one to have the most talked about actors in hollywood. he played everyone from stephen hawken to julian assange to villain conn. he won an emmy for his role as sherlock holmes in "sherlock." now is in a movie called "the imitation game," he plays britain's great unsung hero alan turing. here's the trailer for the film. >> this war, we're not winning it. you speak a word of what i'm about to show you, you will be executed for high treason. >> it's beautiful. it's the greatest inscription device in history and the germans use it for all communications. >> everyone thinks enigma is unbreakable. >> let me try and we'll know for

sure. >> mr. turing, do you know how many died because of it? >> i don't. three. while we have been having this conversation. >> gentlemen, meet mr. turing. we'll work together. they'll only slow me down. you have six minutes to complete the task. >> it's impossible. it takes me eight. >> 5 minutes, 34 seconds. you have to do it in under 6. what is it we're really doing? >> we're with going to break an unbreakable nazi code and win the war. >> oh. to pull this off, one actually has to be a genius. >> i'm design ago machine to allow us to break every message, every day, instantly. >> you're going to need all the help you can get and they are not going to help you if they do not like you. >> have you decrypted a single

german message? >> you will never understand the importance can of what i am creating here! >> our patience has expired. no! if you fire alan, you will have to fire me. >> me, too. and me. it better blood where york. alan, you do not have to do this alone. >> what are you doing? what's going on? >> he thinks one of us is a soviet spy. >> you have more secrets than the best of them. >> what if i don't fancy her in that way? >> can't tell anyone. it's illegal. >> i'm just a mathmetician. sometimes it's people like you who can build things that no one can imagine. >> charlie: it's been a good year to be you. >> it's not been bad.

i chalk it up as a dandy one. i've had a wonderful time both personally and professionally. very happy man. >> charlie: do you go back to do richard iii? >> i do. they have someone else doing it while i'm here. we're filming as part of the bbb crown series, all the shakespeare plays. they've already transmitted the first three which are fantastic. >> charlie: you will be richard iii and also who will be hamlet? >> i will also be hamlet. >> charlie: every actor has to do it, don't they? >> we'll, it's interesting. it's always been a part that's had a an attraction to me. it's a universal role in a

sense. richard iii is a great challenge for any actor, and there's so much of the actor's personality especially with am let because there's a lot of direct addresses and shril so soliloqu. >> charlie: this is the "new yorker" magazine. >> i haven't seen it. >> charlie: it says benedict cumberworld. you can tell by the picture what the phenomenon is. >> wow. >> charlie: what is that? i remember doing that photograph. >> charlie: yeah, a great photograph. >> one of the photographer's daughters and her friends, i thank them so much for going doing that because there are other versions. >> charlie: it says the ones nearest the front have been camped out for hours. >> it was fun to do. but, yeah, what was your question? >> charlie: do you appreciate

the phenomenon, would be one. >> to an extent, yes. he these are very intelligent, smart, driven boys and girls, men and women. i appeal to the generations. >> charlie: of course, because of the roles you play. >> and it's a thrill for me to bring, you know, these people to the kind of work that i've enjoyed doing, the stories i have been riveted by and i think are important to tell and the people. >> charlie: is there a common denominator in terms of the kinds of roles you've enjoyed in your mind? do they meet a certain? >> no, there are obvious things, the intelligence of the characters, the oddness of some of them, the heroism of some of them. but i do the guy next door as the comedian or as in madagascar playing a talking wolf. it's great fun and you get to flex different muscles.

for me, it's great variety. there's not one that define mess as though sherlock's success is necessary. >> charlie: and played frequently in a variety of places before. >> yeah. i always get this wrong but 76 or 96. it's the most portrayed fictional character of all. >> charlie: how do you prepare to come to that kind of character so that you want to be true to the character and at the same time you want to have your own interpretation? >> right. well, and as far as interpretation goes, a huge amount of heavy lifting is done by mark and steve. all the heavy lifting. they invented the idea on a train writing the dr. who series. wouldn't it be interesting to put sherlock holmes in modern day. >> charlie: and in british terms. >> it is a form of fiction which is a fan phenomenon, but they take great care of the legacy of

doyle. there's a lot of crossover. there are very specific draws. as far as my preparation for that particular iconic world, i have the most fantastic group. dr. watson is an observant man trained to be even more observant by sherlock, but he observes this hero and you have a map to plunder every time you go into the series. i go back to the books all the time. >> charlie: was it inevitable that you would become an actor because of your snarnts. >> sadly. tragically for them because it was a very expensive education, the ability to be able to try and choose any given avenue that might have opened up through that education. but, you know, i think they would have been thrilled at whatever i would have ended up doing, but they probably would have been happier if i had been a doctor or lawyer or teacher or something sensible. >> charlie: because they knew

difficulties of being an actor. >> it was very real to us as a family. you get split up. it's very pathetic. you can't detail your life, your schedule, down time, your life in a public space, all these things i experienced growing up. >> charlie: would you do it in any different way in terms of the training, becoming the kind of actor you've become? >> looking back on it, probably not. i used to ponder quite a lit by the whether or not i would have had a fun time of it if i had just gone on with it in my 20s and not gone to university in my early 20s. i'm kind of glad i didn't have a childhood interrupted by the vagueries. i'm glad i had a buffer of domesticity, even with two actor parents. i don't build walls high.

i do have to go around in cars quite fast and roll the windows up. i think it's very important to normalize your life because you very quickly transition between being the observant to being the observed and that can cut off a lifeline to your work. >> charlie: being observed as an actor and being observed -- >> no, observing human behavior and being aware of behavior and things that you can take from your environment and the people in it to being the person that is the main focus of attention. >> charlie: that's what i meant. >> sorry. >> charlie: as an actor you're constantly observing and looking for ideas to interpret. >> i still manage to do it and there are ways of remaining

anonymous. sherlock disguised in full sight is sometimes the best way. >> charlie: you're glad you didn't leave college? >> i'm glad i furthered my education. i made great life-long friends and had fantastic experiences. we all worked incredibly hard on the productions. so in a way it was my version of theater rap. it's very arduous, very difficult weekly system where you would be getting ready to stage one as you're doing another. it's a great stretch. i think we've all experienced that in my group in university. we put on a ridiculous amount of plays, sometimes three at a time. >> charlie: what do you love most about acting? >> a very good question. there's not a lot not to love,

actually. i love the camaraderie. i like the community that compromises the sort o of of affiable. >> charlie: it's a collaborative enterprise. >> it is. the other night, i felt incredibly exposed and alone. god bless standup comics. i don't know anything more fearful to an actor than an open mic because the thing that brought you, in my instance, to the stage, is i have legions of people behind me. >> charlie: you on the shoulders of giants. >> yes, hard working individuals who have families and come to work because they want to tell the story as much as we do or pay the bills, it's a craft or a job. the engagement is these people are working incredibly hard. >> charlie: and you don't want to let them down. >> no, you don't. i love the community of actors.

it's a surprising body of talent. what they do as musicians, artists and humanitarians as well. i like being engaged in the work. i love bringing extraordinary stories and people to live, and ordinary stories and people to live equally. i have been sort of spoiled with the most extraordinary material. >> charlie: how do you get there, for you? tell me, first, when they called you, or when your agent called you, did you know who he was? >> a little from hughes' play, breaking the code. >> charlie: exactly. that was a while ago. it was on television and i saws the televised version of the stage play. >> charlie: you knew who they were talking about? >> primarily, no. i didn't know that much about him. >> charlie: i didn't either fort. >> you read the script and you're engaged with the character. he's awfully uncompromising,

funny, witty, intelligent. then you're embrawled in the mystery and the code and who this man is and breaking the code and the joy of that and the de-evolution and the tragedy of his demise. so the emotional impact of what injustice he was served and what happened to him and the excruciating reality of that is only magnified when you realize i didn't know. this why don't i know this. >> charlie: me, too. a huge urgency to tell the story. it was a big driving factor in what was first the hype script, rightfully. it's amazing far reaching people who read in the industry for a year and vote for scripts on this site to just position them as things that somehow got lost in development and whatever and stalled their progress. so it came to me with all of that attached to it the most -- i think it was the top of the list that year.

i was in what was an english rose garden on my desk. page after page, i got to the end, and i was so moved and then incredibly angry. i thought, i have to tell this story. i want to be a part of this film because this man is a hero. he is the father of the computer science and computing and computers themselves as a body, as a mechanical thing, object, and a war hero in his work with other great cryptographers. some estimated two years and could have gone on by &aving 14 million lives which is an astonishing thing to com compre. then afterwards a man for admitting his true nature being prosecuted and given two years in prison and chemical castration through injections.

so the world closed on him and punished him and he saw no way out, he couldn't work, he couldn't love. >> charlie: the characteristic of him that you most wanted to get at came through -- >> i don't know if there is one. he's so complex. there's a very clear one, sorry. it's a difficult thing to talk about wrathen than sounding a little generalized. it's fact he felt everything so keenly around him. he was able to be influenced by his environment and the people he loved and worked with. that was born out in his relationship with joan clark and his first life love with christopher morcom, the boy he fell in love with at school. that's the key for me as an actor to be able to understand, very inspiring. we celebrate the fact that he's

different. his eccentric behavior was born out of the things we've seen in those days which were illegal. he manages to turn challenges into the good even in the throws of his body being racked by the injections. >> charlie: we get to know him when he's a mathematician and enigma is the machine the nazis use and they have been ukesful and it was having a devastating effect. they could communicate within the nazi empire without any fear of detection. >> we can all hear it. there's a line in it that any school child with an am radio could pick up the signals because you couldn't translate

it. every day they changed the code and there are 159 million and more possible variations and he took an idea from the cryptographers and adapted it in a speck tar lar way it needed to be to beat the enigma machine. >> charlie: and there was rejection at first and somehow he got churc churchill to sign n letting him do what he wanted to do. >> i can't imagine the phrasing but you can't imagine the kind of strong command from the commander-in-chief. it was complete support. >> charlie: this is alan turing after he gets support from churchill because all around him people did not believe he was on the right track and he had such confidence, a bit arrogant, would you say -- >> justifiably, i think, but yes. >> churchill's put alan in charge. >> this is a terrible idea.

no, no, no, no... shall i give these men orders now? >> i hate to say it but yes. excellent. use me. what? you have mediocre english and code breaking skills. >> you can't fire alan and char. i didn't say anything. churchill did. go to hell. well, this is inhuman. even for you. >> popular at school, were you? >> charlie: tell us more about who he was and what it is that is important in this film about understanding what was going on there. >> i think at this stage, it's before john clark is brought in to the story, who is another -- well, to use the phrase, very

humanizing influence in his life. he was incredibly sensitive child. he was brought up by foster parents for a large portion of his early life and his mother returning from a diplomatic in india with his father was stunned to discover her son had a stammer. you can only imagine what difficulties these children now face with that difficulty. then, in an era which wasn't vick torn but might as well have been in attitudes, sent to two boarding schools, the idea of him making easy friends with peers is beyond me. but he was peculiar and had a very different view of the world. he fell in love with an older boy at his public school. >> charlie: shown through flashbacks. >> yes. brilliantly played by alex lawther in the movie.

it's a remarkably mature performance and one of the most moving moments of the film. and he, in that relationship, discovered cryptography and his sexuality, so two very key moments in his life story, the idea that he could also be celebrated and enjoyed for the fact that he was different and he didn't have to worry about his standing opposed to the status quo. so that gave him can have can dense. christopher told him he had a place in the world and entitled to a seat at the table. there's lots to talk about. >> charlie: i know there is. he would then -- i think it channeled into his work. when christopher died, with the correspondence he had with christopher's mother, he was an atheist, but he honored christopher through being a better student and that gave us the work ethic. >> charlie: a sense of

urgency. >> yes, to make the most of his life. you're quite right. his brilliance is picked up by many. and beyond that, in that space, he was adored and very loved. there were people who loved him h. what truly happened is this frndship blossomed into love, romantic but not physical, between john clark, both experiencing prejudice. >> charlie: both brilliant. yes. >> charlie: kiera knightley. a woman in a man's world, fighting for equal pay, same tenants of feminism today, sadly, still.

he had to operate within a team. >> charlie: which was essential to get the job done. >> it was. he's more of a team player in reality than in the film. >> charlie: more in reality? i think so. other people said he was cantankerous. other people adored him and didn't mind his eccentricities. >> charlie: and mistakes were so high. >> every day they were failing to win a war resulting in the whole of occupied europe leaning in toward an island. we were besieged. >> charlie: ships in the atlantic were being sunk. >> all of that. >> charlie: it presents the moral dilemma that comes. comes. >> it was shocking. >> charlie: when you talk about fathers of the digital revolution, he's at the top of the list. >> absolutely. the titans of silicon valley acknowledged that. >> charlie: they absolutely

do. >> he wanted -- he wished that the apple logo had been in honor of him. >> charlie: walter isaacson on this program who wrote the book on steve jobs biography talking about alan turing. >> he came up with the notion of art initial intelligence. he comes up with a test to say how would we define a machine that could think? you put a machine and person in a different room and feed them questions and if after a while you can't tell the difference between the machine and the human then you have no reason to say the machine's not thinking and that's called the turing test or the imitation game. the movie is great. it's about alan turing an. alan turing was homosexual, quite up front about it but he had to keep it secret when he

was breaking the german wartime codes. >> charlie: it was against the law. >> he gets arrested for gross indecency, finally. he's given hormone treatments. it's really bad. you know, he seems to ride with it for a while, but after he's written this notion of the imitation game of the computer, a few years later, he bites into a cyanide-laced apple to commit suicide. is that something a machine would do? it almost helps you realize the emotions and, you know, that come with being human are fundamentally different these days than what a machine does. >> charlie: i asked him about steve jobs and as you just said, the famous apple, did it come from there, and steve said, no, according to walter, but i wish it had. >> you think about the fact that it was also a rainbow colored apple in the first inception instead of the glowing white

that we have now. couldn't be more apt. the emotional truth of alan, he was fascinated with -- he was illustrating on what makes this different, what defines differences and how thin those paper walls are, and we should celebrate it than fear it. and sadly he was in an area where fear dominated and prejudice came about and he was persecuted for being different. >> charlie: did you watch and read and find everything you could or was it some other way? >> sadly, there's no footage. >> charlie: pictures. there are pictures. >> charlie: but you don't get the stamina. >> you can't get that pa from pictures. there's a lot of fantastic anecdotes. >> charlie: people who knew him? >> people who knew him and interviews and surviving family members as well who are very fluid and talking to me about what they remember, but it was very often as children, but even that was a clue into the humanity of the man.

there was so much written as to who he was on a day to day basis. there was a story about him visiting and playing chess with his back turned to the board and delighted at his presence and not feeling like they were children, feeling comfortable in his presence and they could bethemselves rather than be quiet and not seen or heard. >> charlie: also the way he was relentlessly chased. how hard it was and how they used every fear he had to tear him down. >> absolutely. from the beginning, very sensitive boy born into the great conflict of the war, and then as a mathematician or a scientist pulled into this huge geopolitical mess where the last thing he wanted to be was a political pawn and a player in epps nanl. he wanted to be a mathematician, a scientist, and then his private life as well.

same things. he just wanted to get on with his private life and nothing professionally or personally was allowed to be his. the doors closing all the time till the very end where he took his own life. >> charlie: is there evidence that he knew what he had achieved and knew its potential? >> sadly, i don't think so. i'm not completely sure. one of the things i'm most happy about in the film is a moment where joan clark says to him at the end, you may wish that you weren't different, but i can assure you the rest of the world is incredibly grateful for that fact. there are cities that wouldn't exist because of you, because you are different. no one ever got to tell him that in his life and that's a great tragedy. who knows. >> charlie: finally, the queen realized it, too. >> the queen, the government. >> charlie: what a terrible thing they had done but they realized it at long last, was in 1990? >> no, a couple of years ago.

the first part was in 2012, the first pardon. >> charlie: i hope you will talk to us after you take the stage as hamlet. >> i would love to. >> charlie: this is a command performance by you and an extraordinary story to tell. thank you very much. >> thank you very much for having me. >> charlie: lucian freud was one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. david dawson was his assistant, model and friend for the last two decades of his life. in 2012 he began photographing. a book called a painter's progress, a portrait of lucian freud. david dawson and john richardson join me, pleased to have both of them here. because i've known you for so long and because of all the biographies, all of the editions, the picasso biographies, tell me where you

think the art world puts lucian freud. >> a difficult question to answer. lucian was one of a kind. he wasn't part of a school. he was unique. you can't put him with the modernist or impressionists or any other group that there might have been. he was one of a kind and he was just a very great artist who, to my mind, was a great portraitist of his day. he also had this extraordinary feeling, maybe inherited from his grandfather, but perceiving people's personalities. >> charlie: his grandfather. his grandfather, yes. and what -- lucian we veered his grandfather but not for his psychoanalysis but for his earlier work on eels and mutes

and sea things, and he was tremendously proud of his grandfather for having discovered the secret of hu howo tell a male eel from a female eel. (laughter) >> charlie: when did you meet him? >> when i was 18 and he was 17 at slave school at oxford. we joined the blitz. became friends instantly. went to meet him in london. he said come have a drink in cafe royal. i went. there was lucian standing on one leg like a stork. and all the people were saying that's freud's grandson! and lucian, standing on one leg, and rather disturbed when we came and disrupted this great sort of effect he was having on the bar. >> charlie: it was a life-long

friendship and correspondence? >> life-long friendship. i lived in france for a long time but didn't see him for ten years at a time. right at the end of my life i saw a lot of him and he did a portrait of me. >> charlie: the end of his life? >> the end of his life. because he always wanted to do my portrait. we had been talking about it for years. he said, how long ca can you ben london? i said, i can spare nine or ten days but i have to get back to work. he said, i'll try to do a portrait. i've never done anything so quickly. promise to come every day for nine days, and i did. he came back from new york with tiny canvass. one of them was to paint the queen on. he rehearsed a little bit on me. i sat there for nine mornings in a row and, as he did the last

brush stroke, the cab was outside waiting to take me to the airport. >> charlie: wow. i want to introduce you to david dawson who i've only met one in my life but it was one of the most interesting days of my life where i went to meet lucian freud and we met at(?q studio and you were there. >> yeah. >> charlie: then we walked over to have lunch, the three of us, and it was the most engaging conversation with an artist i've ever had. then we went back to the studio. i pleaded valiantly that we should have a conversation. he thought about it. we talked about it. then he said, in the end, he said, i just can't do it. >> no. >> charlie: but it was a wonderful evening. and i want, on that day, i want to begin with the relationship between the two of you. >> yeah. >> charlie: you were working h his dealer. >> i did. when i graduated from the royal college in london, i studied painting at the royal college of art. i had a job throw mornings a week with james kurtman who was in london and that's when i met

lucian. from first meeting lucian, he took my phone number and phoned me every morning. >> charlie: to talk about -- anything. i think he just was interested. he was interested in people. and if he liked someone, he just would want to know everything about that person. and then lucian and james came to the end of their agreement and james representing him, so i just then went with lucian every single day. and then also around the same time, his dealer in new york, lucian showed him the paintings in the studio, and the rest is history. >> charlie: and what would you do for him? >> everything. to start, with it was very much the run around boy -- buying paint, getting canvass. >> charlie: setting up. setting him up to paint.

run errands, take letters. he was keen on writing notes to people and i would deliver them by hand. >> charlie: and you would have breakfast in the morning. >> and lunch. in the beginning it was more sporadic. i would just be there when needed. i happened to live close, so a 10-minute walk away, so it was very practical. >> charlie: what's interesting is you didn't go home and take notes knowing you were in the presence of a great painter. >> yeah. >> charlie: you later took photographs, which we'll talk about. >> yeah. >> charlie: but the relationship deepened and he called you an honorable man which is what he liked so much. >> i was really taken with him and he was great, great company, and i really valued my growing friendship with him. and the idea of going home and writing about that seemed to me not the right thing to do. i wanted it to be something in my life that's part of me now is my friendship with lucian. rather than running home and trying to write down what was

just said or what happened, i thought, no, no -- >> charlie: but you credit your career in part on lucian. >> yes. i was mesmerized when i first walked into his studio. >> charlie: by? by the paintings. lucian was very -- in his flat where the studio was in holland park, the doors were always closed in every room. so the studio is a very provide space. so after meeting him, after about two or three weeks, he said, just pop into the studio with me, and he opened the door and he had a nude of a man with his leg over the chair. i felt there was such concentration in the studio and a real sense of purpose. he was 69. i really felt he was at the top of his game here. i just said, oh, i understand

what he's doing. i was just mesmerized by it. i felt -- i understood him and i felt, oh, i can help. i get it. >> charlie: and two things happened. first, you started taking photographs. >> yes, i did. >> charlie: quietly in the beginning. >> quietly. i mean, it was six years before i sat for him. so i had known him for six years. after we started this one painting, called sunny morning, eight legs, i really did want to document how this painting was being made and that's when i would have my little camera and i would, just for myself, photograph the progress of the painting. a few years later, he was doing a portrayed of david hockney, and i was with david in the studio and he just finished. i was photographing him with the portrayed and lucian just walked

in and because it was film in those days, not until you got the film developed did you know what you had. there was a photograph of him and lucian walking through the door and lucian is the one that found the photograph very exciting and lucian that pushed out forward of it. >> charlie: so you began taking photographs? >> a few. it was always about trust and respect and the feel of our daily lives. it was about this is how it worked in the studio. >> charlie: it was in the studio as well as outside the studio. >> yeah. >> charlie: even the queen, you took a photograph of the queen when you went to do that. >> but you could not not take a photograph of this event. lucian had chosen -- it was the restoration studio, a very quiet, non-descript room but with beautiful overlight and it was quite a small room again. he felt like, ah, i can do a

painting here. it's a rather grand chair. it was on the platform and the queen could arrive through clarence house, so it's a sort of private way of entering. >> charlie: and then he asked you to -- to pose for him, to be the subject of his painting? >> yeah. i was very excited by that. it was very exciting to see how he painted, and it was such a fascinating way. he would mix the color and look really intensely at you and then mix it again and slightly change the tone. he would -- on a small handheld palette. he would scrape it for five minutes and then put another color. >> charlie: he would paint to the side so you could see how he

painted? >> because the canvas was large, i could see what he was doing. if it was smaller, you only saw the back. but all the paintings of me are pretty much of large canvass. i could see him working on the side. >> charlie: did you like what he did of you? >> i loved what he did for me but what was so marvelous about it is when lucian was painting, he talked a great deal. suddenly, he was going to work on your eyes or your mouth or something and he would get -- you had to be quiet and stay still. otherwise, you chatted away like crazy. and lucian had a fantastic a memory for poetry. he could recite masses of shakespeare, you name it, songwriters -- >> charlie: so he was like a cull can chiewrl reference. >> a cultural reference. and then jokes and dirty jokes and limericks and god knows what. these would come streaming out one after another.

we talked a lot of love gossip. he would say what's happened to so and so, i haven't seen her recently? then he would get on to it and then he would shush, and you shut up, and he would work away very intently on your mouth or eyes, then he would go back to humming a cole porter song. he had a fantastic memory. >> charlie: this is holland park studio. >> yes. this is the beginnings of the first portrait he did of me. i'm lying on the bed which you will see. he would work in a small area of the canvas and build it to quite a finished state. my cheek and my ear, the whole of the head is built up quite strongly. then he moved along the body. >> charlie: next is queen

elizabeth ii. and this is your photograph. >> yes, i asked if i could take this photograph. >> charlie: how did that happen, the photograph of the queen? >> because i'd do with lucian on each sitting to set up the easel and have everything in place and wait for the queen to arrive, i just plucked up enough courage to say, ma'am, would you mind if i took a photograph? >> charlie: not only that but how did the portrait of the queen take place? did he ask buckingham or -- >> before he did the portrait of the queen, he had done the portrait of robert fellows who at the time was the queen's secretary, and while robert was sitting with lucian, they started chatting and thought the idea of lucian always wanted to sort of paint. >> charlie: he only wanted to paint people he liked or he found interesting. >> yeah. he helped get the family in from germany and his graduator i his.

>> charlie: this is a photograph you took. >> this was a wild fox that was trying to be domesticated. lucian's love of horses brought me around. i was walking, there's a park in west london quite close to the studio. i noticed in the corner of this very quiet park, there were small stables where a nun would look after 15 ponies, horses, for disadvantaged kids. that was a charity. i thought, lucian, i said, could we take lucian here to see the ponies, we could possibly work there. so we went to meet the nun. he loved it. we set up the easel and started painting horses in the stables where there was this little fox. >> charlie: next slide.

this is at john's celebration for volume 3. >> it was the grandest dinner ever given for me. >> charlie: and you probably had a lot of grand dinners. >> well, not very grand. this club is one of the most beautiful rooms in london. lucian organized tha that. it was a great occasion. mick jagger was there. everybody got rather high and was rollicking all over the place and rather sedate atmosphere of this wonderfully sedate club was somewhat disturbed. >> charlie: this is a photograph of paint brushes in 2011. >> okay, yeah. this is in the studio, this is how lucian worked. i wouldn't tidy things up in any way. i let lucian live and work how he wanted. so this is where the paint -- you know, was looking for paints. would mean scrummaging through

all of this. >> charlie: you chronicled sort of the progress of the paintings, too, which is interesting. >> i just love being around -- i thought the whole world was in this one room. >> charlie: really? i really did feel a great passionate sense of place. >> charlie: yeah. so, yeah, i could photograph everything and find it interesting. >> charlie: but would you ever photograph a painting he left in the evening? because he showed me the time i was there, he had a daylight studio and then bun for night. >> he never crossed the two. if we were working under electric light, the color on the skin is completely different. the way the light falls on the skin, it's so different. so if youtarted in the day, it was always a day painting, same for night. >> charlie: did he ever come in in the morning and simply paint over it? >> no, but he had such a strong edit -- is elf edit. so the paymentings which would have gone on for almost a year,

and then he would go, no, it's just not working and reeled physically put his boot through it and rip them up. >> charlie: having spent so much time. >> heartbreaking for lucian more than anyone but also for the model. (laughter) >> including yourself? no, he always had two or three goes before he really got going on one painting. >> charlie: he was very energetic as a painter. he would go for hours painting. a lot of people only would go for an hour and a half and be exhausted. could picasso go for hours? >> picasso would go for hours and hours and hours. but in a different way than lucian. picasso painted very, very quickly. and lucian painted very, very slowly. that's the enormous difference between them. lucian took hours and days and years to finish a painting. >> lucian was very tense and uptight when he was painting. it was a real struggle for him. was picasso like that? >> no, picasso had this enormous

amount of energy and he worked very, very, very quickly. even on the most complicated pictures, it's amazing how quickly they were done. you know, in a matter of days sometimes. he was so very intense, working on it. and it would be -- you would go back three days later and find the painting finished. but lucian would take -- it would be six months, 18 months. >> but a very tight, nervous energy in there. you know, and if thingt weren't going right which for lucian was a lot of the time, it wasn't how he wanted it. >> charlie: what was his judgment of himself? as a painter, he knew he had a great ability. any painter has to have that confidence, but he really pushed himself to try and make something -- i think he believed in a bit of magic in art.

>> charlie: and picasso? i think he just knew genius early. >> no, no doubt in picasso's mind at all. >> charlie: that he was the painter of all time. >> well, yes, and he didn't doubt, he didn't worry. he just painted away and another painting and another painting. there are very few paintings in which he sort of sat and looked at it for hours on end and then made wire and brush strokes. lucian would look at it for ages and then put one brush stroke and then think abo it. >> it was a very good decision lucian made, having watched him, and you could see him thinking things through. then the decision he would made in his head and acted upon it was always the right decision, i felt. >> charlie: let's see the next painting. i love this, too. >> i took this because i was sitting for a portrait, so that's what i was looking at. i had my camera slip down the

side of the chair. so i just took a photo. so that's my vision of lucian while he's looking at me. >> charlie: next image. that was in 2005. >> that's the portrait he was taking when i took the photograph. >> charlie: and the last portrait he took of you? >> portrait of the hand, it's called. it's a naked body with my dog at the side of me. just about -- lucian felt it was there or thereabouts and didn't mind it being shoarntion but right at the end, h he just phot a little too weak. >weak. it took years. >> charlie: it did. an old, old man, and it's pretty good. >> charlie: interesting enough, you inherited a bit of money from his estate. >> yeah. >> charlie: so you're free to paint, you're back in fainting and had an exhibition at

marlboro in london. >> and i came to new york and paint here. >> charlie: you paint mainly exteriors? >> yes, i like of being in the plain air, in a way. i like being in an environment and soaking up that and painting. >> charlie: are you a better painter because you spent that time with lucian? >> yes. he's painted every corner of my garden, which i love. he comes and stays a week at a time. he will have three or four paintings going at the same time and he comes at different times of the year. sometimes he has to paint out the green leaves and turn them into autumn leaves and so on. it's a constant, constant change, isn't it? >> yes. i have started a portrait of someone in london. >> charlie: you're going to try a portrait? >> we'll see, yeah. >> charlie: someone you know well? >> getting to know well. >> charlie: ah... we'll see. >> charlie: do you think you will be influenced by lucian? >> yes. >> charlie: you won't try to

duplicate him but you will be influenced by him? >> yes. >> charlie: he's in your head? in a good way. >> charlie: how do you think he was in your head? >> we were just great friends and he was just a remarkable man that had such an open acceptance of everything, and then he would make his own mind up about it. >> charlie: he was a seductive man, was he not? >> david was the most important in lucian's life without any question. you should never forget that. >> he also -- >> charlie: why do you think that was, john? >> i think because david played an enormously important role in his work, in his art. it somehow reinforced his enormous gifts. one always felt he needed david around, and david kept everything going, and enabled

lucian to sort of paint as he wanted and take as much time or -- he was under far less pressure because david was around. david was in control of everything. isn't that true? >> well, yeah, i sort of gave him freedom, i felt. i gave him his freedom so he could paint. >> charlie: he had to worry about nothing but painting while you were there? >> yes, in my head that's what i thought i was trying to do. >> charlie: good man. you have an exhibition now. >> i do, indeed. >> charlie: what is it? of picasso and the camera. >> charlie: right. i didn't want to do any more exhibitions on picasso on photographs and have a lot of foachts of picasso, bang, bang, bang, around the wall. i wanted to show how picasso took control of the camera and that's what it's about. >> charlie: where is it. begosian gallery on 21s

21st street, it's around for another month. >> charlie: this is a portrait of lucian freud by david dawson who knew him as well as anyone could know him, and you see what's in here, just an extraordinary sense of portraits, of the subject and the painting. is this yours? >> yeah,. >> charlie: that he gave you. hristmas day. >> charlie: a painter's light. we are always sort of trance trd by the life of artists and this is a reflection of that. john, where are you on the biography of picasso? >> i'm laboring on the fourth volume but i've done about half of snit this is at the end? >> well, we're still in the 1930s. i'm just about to get in the spanish civil war. i'm determined to live long enough to finish snit i hope so. thank you for joining us.

>> thank you. >> charlie: see you next time. >> charlie: visit us online on pbs.org and charlierose.com. captioning sponsored by rose communications captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org

and by... the handel group strives to empower individuals to change their lives through individual coaching and educational programs. handelgroup.com. >> hello and welcome to "on meditation." i'm elena brower. how do you document an inner journey? we chose to explore this question for this special about extraordinary people and their meditation practices. our goal was to demystify meditation and make it more accessible. you're about to see a few of the portraits from "on meditation" and gain intimate access into the lives and practices of these remarkable people. we'll also share some guided meditations so that you can