Sue Tilley


Sue Tilley, also known as Big Sue, is a British artist's model and writer. She modelled for painter Lucian Freud.
Born in south London, 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.
Freud painted several large nude portraits of Tilley, the first being . Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, painted in 1995, was sold at auction in 2008 for £17 million in New York City. In 2015, the 1994 painting Benefits Supervisor Resting sold for £35 million. A fourth painting Sleeping by the Lion Carpet was painted in 1996. Freud also produced a number of etchings featuring Tilley, including Woman with an Arm Tattoo which Tilley sold in 2005.
In 1997, she published Leigh Bowery: The life and times of an Icon, a biography.
From September 2000 to March 2001, Chief Curator Rolf Lauter at Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt could realise 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 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, cups of coffee.