EARLY sketches by the influential artist Lucian Freud are to go on sale in Colchester.

The three ink on paper drawings are owned by Suffolk based artist Maggi Hambling who has decided to put them up for auction.

They were drawn during the late 1930s when Freud was an art student at the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing.

The sketches feature a seated man on a chair, male anatomy and two female nudes and are expected to fetch up to £18,000 collectively when they are auctioned at Reeman Dansie fine art sale in Colchester next Wednesday.

Maggi Hambling - best known for her four metre high interlocking scallop shells on Aldeburgh beach - was given the paintings by Sir Cedric Morris in 1980.

Freud was also a student of Cedric Morris when the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing was based a Dedham.

Following a fire in 1939, which Freud was rumoured to have started with a stray cigarette end and which destroyed the school, Morris and his partner Arthur Lett-Haines relocated to Benton End, near Hadleigh.

It is believed that the drawings date from the time that the school was in Dedham.

Ms Hambling said: “The drawings were part of a layout pad which students used in the early days, in the 1940s, and the drawings were done when Lucian was a student with Cedric and Lett and it is interesting to see his early work.

“They are drawings from life and Cedric gave them to me saying it’s good for artists to have another artists work. “I found them fascinating because it is always good see the early work of people who become so eminent.

“Cedric gave them to me in 1980 and I have enjoyed them for many years and I feel that now is a good time to let someone else have the pleasure of them.”

Freud, who died aged 88 in 2011, is widely acknowledged as one of the greatest and most controversial painters of his generation.

His life-sized painting of a sleeping, naked woman set a new world record when it was sold for just over £17million in 2008.

The sketches, which are being auctioned individually, will go on sale at Reeman Dansie’s Antique and Fine Art sale next Wednesday.

Auctioneer Jonathan Benson said: “Freud is very in vogue at the moment, people want Freud.

“I did some research and went up to see Maggie and give my opinion. She said ‘I’d like you to take them.’ These sorts of pictures usually go to London so it’s great to be selling them here locally.

“People want big names and he is a big name.”