I’ve always wanted to create drama in my pictures, which is why I paint people. It’s people who have brought drama to pictures from the beginning. The simplest human gestures tell stories.’
-Lucian Freud
Freud, a grandson of the psycho-analyst Sigmund Freud, was born in Berlin in 1922 and fled to Britain with his Jewish family in 1933, when he was 10. Lucian Freud is a master of figurative painting and related subjects’ characters through stark portraiture. His work drew comparisons with equally shocking works by Courbet, Titian and Picasso, the feelings exposed registering as both brash and profound. In 1987, the critic Robert Hughes nominated Freud as the greatest living realist painter.
Photograph of young Lucian Freud.Here are a few of his portraits that are especially deep, intuitive and profound.
The portraits of Freud don’t necessarily come across as pretty. They are fleshy, raw and seem to capture an essence of humanity in an undressed state of vulnerability, and sometimes ugliness. With the eye of the artist, he definitely saw beneath the exterior.
David Hockney2002
Boy’s Head1952
A Painter1962
Portrait of Christian BerardCompletion Date: 1948
John MintonCompletion Date: 1952
Reflection (Self-portrait), 1985Private Collection, Ireland © The Lucian Freud Archive.
Photo: Courtesy Lucian Freud Archive
Boy on a Sofa fetched £1.49m in 2011, a record price for a work on paper by Freud.
Ali1974
The Painter’s Mother Resting I – Lucian Freud, 1975-1976
Woman in a White Shirt – Lucian Freud, 1956-1957
Benefits Supervisor Sleeping (also known as Big Sue) – Lucian Freud, 1995Freud’s Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, a life-sized nude portrait of Ms Tilley, set the world record for the highest price paid at auction for a work of art by a living artist when it sold for $33.6 million in 2008 at Christie’s in New York. – a world record for a work by a living artist. More about the painting here.
