Sister Mary Joy recalls her unlikely friendship with the artist as equine sketch goes to auction

A previously unknown Lucian Freud sketch is to go under the hammer after a Roman Catholic sister who struck up an unlikely friendship with the painter finally decided to part with it for the good of her ponies.

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The unfinished drawing on canvas has for years been in the possession of Sister Mary Joy Langdon, who runs the Wormwood Scrubs Pony Centre in west London, which Freud visited regularly, combining his passions for drawing, painting and riding.

When he turned up for the first time in 2002, having by then been one of the world’s most famous artists for decades, the nun failed to recognise him and mistook him for an enthusiastic amateur just starting out. She handed him a beginner’s book on how to paint horses, which was soon returned.

“I hadn’t a clue who he was,” she told the Observer. “I said, ‘This is a simple book on how to draw horses, maybe you would like to look at it.’ Lucian carefully turned over each page. Then he handed it back to me in a very gentlemanly fashion, thanked me and said, ‘It’s very good.’”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The sketch of Goldie. Photograph: © Lucian Freud

Freud became a regular at the centre over time. “What he valued was that nobody knew who he was. He’d come in the morning. I had several students with special needs in the yard on courses. They hadn’t a clue who he was. So that was freedom for him,” said Sister Mary Joy.

To raise funds for the charity, which she founded 30 years ago, she has now decided to part with a picture of a Welsh cob called Goldie, a stunning chestnut with flaxen mane and tail. It is estimated to fetch between £40,000 and £60,000 at auction.

Sister Mary Joy was surprised when Freud selected the horse: “I wouldn’t have wanted to spend hours with Goldie. She liked her own space and would tell you, ‘I’m not particularly keen on you.’ I really wanted him to go to Sioux, a skewbald mare with a lovely personality.” After a few days, Freud realised that he also “didn’t warm” to Goldie, she recalled. “That’s when he chose Sioux. He did two paintings of her.”

Freud died in 2011, aged 88, with his output in later years marked by a number of equine portraits. It is rare for works by him to have not been seen, so any discovery is significant.

“I love the Sketch of Goldie for what it reveals about Lucian’s process – a canvas worked up in charcoal and then rubbed over with paint rags to give it form and energy,” said Krassi Kuneva, from Chiswick Auctions in west London, which will offer the drawing up in its sale of modern and postwar British art on 3 December.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Lucian Freud photographed in 1982. Photograph: Jane Bown/The Observer

“It’s got the physicality of a painting but the delicacy of a drawing, an unusual combination, especially for him. The very distinctive cropping of the muzzle and front hoofs add an intensity.”

Asked why Freud gave the work to her, Sister Mary Joy said: “Lucian told me that, if he didn’t like a painting, he would destroy it. He just left it in my office. I never took it out, never showed it to anybody.” She added: “He said to me that, all the time he was doing [a painting], it was part of him. But once it was completed, it then meant nothing to him.”

The pair’s friendship was close: they spoke about his gambling problems, said Sister Mary Joy, as well as religion: “He was from a Jewish background. He well knew that I was a Roman Catholic religious sister. He believed you are what you are, not what you come from.”

Freud used to bring Sioux carrots and apples, and would ride her without a saddle and riding hat, much to Sister Mary Joy’s alarm. He quietly donated money to the centre, in envelopes marked “For Sioux”.

Sketch of Goldie will be unveiled to the public at the pony centre on 23 November, from 1pm.