RIP Lucian Freud

‘I paint people’, Freud has said, ‘not because of what they are like, not exactly in spite of what they are like, but how they happen to be’.

Lucian Freud, the foremost figurative artist in the 20th Century art world, renowned for his intense realist portraits depicting the vulnerability and humanity of his sitters, died last week at the age of 88. He was the grandson of psychoanalysist Sigmund Freud, born in Berlin in 1922 and moved to England with his Jewish Family in 1933, where he gained citizenship in 1939. Freud came to redefine British painting, with his stark portraiture showcasing what it is like to be human. Freud’s subjects were often the people in his life; friends, family, fellow painters, lovers, children. As he has said ‘The subject matter is autobiographical, it’s all to do with hope and memory and sensuality and involvement really’. His works have been increasingly sought after at recent auctions and his portrayal of an overweight nude woman, Sue Tilley, sleeping on a couch sold in 2008 for £20.6 million – a world record for a work by a living artist. He is also famous for his portrait of the Queen, which he refused to paint in any other style but his own, and the supermodel Kate Moss, who posed for him in 2002.