Art · 20th century
1922–2011 · British
Figurative painting — the School of London
Lucian Freud painted the naked human body with a scrutiny that has never been matched: thick, mottled, unflattering flesh built up over hundreds of hours of sittings in his studio. A grandson of Sigmund Freud, he worked from life only, painted friends, lovers, children, a performance artist, a Jobcentre supervisor and the Queen.
A vast naked woman asleep on a worn sofa; in 2008 it set a record for a work by a living artist at $33.6 million (1995)
Private collection
The sitter was Sue Tilley, a Jobcentre supervisor introduced by Leigh Bowery
No free image available (likely still in copyright) · see it on Wikipedia
An early portrait of the artist's first wife with a bull terrier, one breast bared, her eyes enormous (1951)
Tate, London
Kitty Garman, daughter of Jacob Epstein
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A tiny head of the monarch wearing the diamond diadem, painted over about eighteen months of sittings and given to the sitter (2001)
Royal Collection, Windsor
Six inches by nine; the artist gave it to the Queen and refused any fee
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A modern household arranged like a Watteau fête, five figures crowded on a bed in a west London room (1983)
Private collection
After Watteau's Pierrot Content; sold for about $86 million in 2022
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A performance artist from Australia, painted naked and monumental, who became the artist's great late model (1990)
Private collection
Leigh Bowery, who died in 1994, also brought Sue Tilley to the studio
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A self-portrait in which the artist looks up out of the canvas with two of his children watching from below (1965)
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Painted from a mirror on the floor, so the artist looms over the viewer
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