Freud's models take a turn

But over his 60-year career the man who inherited Francis Bacon's crown as the nation's greatest painter has unleashed his uncompromising eye on many "ordinary" people - those far less used to being in the public eye.

Now, at Tate Britain's huge Freud retrospective, many of them will have the disconcerting experience of watching guests appraise every inch of the sumptuous - but very revealing - canvasses on which they appear.

For Freud the social status of his subjects is irrelevant. He says: "I paint people not because of what they are like, not exactly in spite of what they are like, but how they happen to be."

Posing for an artist as great - and reputedly as fascinating - as Freud is an experience enjoyed by only a lucky few. But those who have been consigned to canvass by the reclusive 79-year-old master are, to all intents and purposes, made immortal.

Here, two of them describe what it was like to join the Mona Lisa and the Laughing Cavalier in the canon of art history.

The DSS manager

Sue Tilley, 45, manages a JobCentre in central London. Two pictures of her are in the Tate show.

"They're not the most flattering - but I like them," she said. "So many people want to be painted by him and I'm very lucky he wanted to paint me. People will look at the pictures in hundreds of years and I don't have any children, so this is my way of carrying on."

Ms Tilley found it "fascinating" sitting in Freud's studio for hours on end. "Lucian is fascinating. We would talk about everything. He knows so much and has been alive so long."

"It's unusual to have that amount of time to just think - and it is amazing what comes to you. You solve all the little problems in your life."

Ms Tilley met Freud in the early Nineties after her friend, the New Romantic performance artist Leigh Bowery, urged him to paint her. "Leigh always hated that I worked in a JobCentre," she said, "and he was convinced Lucian should paint me. He thought it might lead to other things.

"I first met Lucian in a nightclub and his main comment was that my lipstick didn't suit the colour of my face. He's so sensitive to colour. He took me to lunch and told me lots of jokes. Then, about a year later, he said to Leigh, 'Bring her to the studio - I'll use her.'"

The curator

Flora Fairbain, 30, and an independent art curator, said Freud had painted her at "a very vulnerable time". Seeing the pictures felt "a bit odd - but not at all embarrassing".

"I like the picture very much, " she added. "Even though everybody who knows me says it doesn't look like me I think it does. He's got all the details."

Ms Fairbairn sat for Lucian Freud for seven months in 2000 and 2001 - during which time her mother fell ill and died. Exposing herself to the artist's gaze was, consequently, a raw experience. "Seeing the painting at the Tate felt odd because it took me back to that time when my mother was dying. I was either sitting for Lucian or in the hospital."

Ms Fairbairn says Freud was "very good company" - but lying in one position for so long caused her so much pain she had to see an osteopath. "It was a very taxing and sometimes painful experience."

But, like Ms Tilley, she found the sittings gave her a rare opportunity: "You don't often get much time to turn your phone off and think about your life. At that time it was wonderful."

Freud first saw Ms Fairbairn in a restaurant in Clerkenwell, which he phoned the next day to get her number. "I worked for an architect's at the time, and I was in a meeting when my phone went off. When he said, 'Hallo, I am Lucian Freud' I thought it was someone playing a joke and told him to call back."

And Freud did. "I was astonished," said Ms Fairbairn. Halfway through her sitting she left her job, and now works curating art shows across London. "I became very interested in art through watching him paint."

Lucian Freud, sponsored by UBS Warburg, runs from 21 June until 22 September at Tate Britain . Advance booking: Ticketmaster 0870 166 8283.