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MODERN BRITISH PAINTING
For a guide to the best of
modern UK painters (1960-2000),
see Contemporary
British Painting.
WORLDS TOP ARTISTS
For top creative practitioners, see:
Best Artists of All Time.
For the greatest view painters, see:
Best Landcape Artists.
For the greatest still life art, see:
Best Still Life Painters.
For the greatest portraitists
see: Best Portrait Artists.
For the greatest genre-painting, see:
Best Genre Painters.
For the top allegorical painting,
see: Best History Painters.
WORLD'S BEST ART
For a list of the best examples of
Fine Art Painting, by the
world's top artists, see below:
Greatest Paintings Ever
Oils, watercolours, mixed
media from 1300-present.
Oil Painting
History, styles and development.
WHAT IS ART?
For an explanation of the
aesthetic issues surrounding
the creative visual arts, see:
Art Definition, Meaning
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Early Life
Lucian was born in Berlin in 1922. His
father Ernst Freud, the youngest son of the Viennese psychoanalyst Sigmund
Freud, was an architect who had painted as a student. His mother, Lucie
Brasch, was the daughter of a rich merchant. The family lived in a wealthy
area of the city, but when Hitler came to power in 1933 Ernst decided
to move his family to England for safety. Lucian was about 11 when he
arrived in the country and became a naturalised citizen in 1939. From
an early age he enjoyed drawing and everyone assumed he was destined to
become an artist. In 1939 he gained admission to the East Anglian School
of Drawing and Painting, run by the painter Cedric Morris. Morris was
a self taught artist and influenced the way Freud worked. Freud's early
works were 'spikey', figures were heavily lineated - similar in style
to German Expressionists
like Max Beckmann (1884-1950) and Otto
Dix (1891-1969). Some critics pointed to a Surrealism
influence but as Freud himself stated: "As a young man I was not
obsessed with working in a specific way, even though I felt very little
freedom. The rigidity of Surrealism, its rigid dogma of irrationality,
seemed unduly limiting. I could never put anything into a picture that
wasn't actually there in front of me. That would be a pointless lie, a
mere bit of artfulness". That said, his early work The Painters
Room (1944) which shows a couch and a giant zebra poking his head
through a window seems to have definite surrealist overtures.
Painting Career
Drawing is
an essential element to Freud's art. He says "he wants to draw and
go somewhere from there". He is a great admirer of the draughtsmanship
of Jean-Auguste-Dominique
Ingres (1780-1867), saying "Ingres couldn't draw without inventing...A
line, any single line, of his drawings is worth looking at". Colour
is downplayed, "I don't want any of my colours to be noticeable.
I want the colour to be the colour of life, so that you would notice it
as being irregular if it changed".
The colour
in Freud's early paintings is muted, he often cleaned his brush after
each stroke to achieve the clean finish. This can be seen in his painting
Girl with a White Dog (1951) which shows his first wife, Kitty,
sitting on a couch - bearing one breast, and a dog with his head on her
lap. He became interested in the connection between humans and animals,
culminating in his painting Naked Man with a Rat (1977). Other
important work from this period include Interior in Paddington
(1951), Portrait of Francis Bacon (1952), Girl in Bed (1952),
Hotel Bedroom (1954) and Man in a Mackintosh (1957).
In the late 1950s Freud's style changed and his started painting in heavier
impasto. His brushmarks
became brusquer, and he began to paint blotches on skin, veins, fat and
muscle. Sleeping Head (1962) is considered one of his first breaks
in this area. It is an up-close of a woman's head, sleeping, and although
we can't see the rest of her body, the use of swirling paint in her puffy
face seems to echo a thigh, buttock and breast. Freud stated: "I
was going to do a nude, then I realised that I could do it from the head".
His study of nudes, are intense and unsettling and critics have claimed
similarities to those of Picasso. Other paintings
from this period include John Deakin (1963), Naked Child Laughing
(1963), Interior with Hand Mirror (Self Portrait, 1967), Naked
Girl (1966), Girl in a Fur Coat (1967) and Buttercups
(1968).
In the mid 1970s, Freud turned his attend to nude males - they are often
sitting in modern houses, reclined on sofas and beds. Dogs, rats and other
animals are often seem quietly reposing with the sitter. Some of the paintings
have unsettling undertones, such as Naked Man with his Friend (1978).
Here a ginger haired man is seen naked on a sofa, lying with another man,
who is much older and dressed in a white suit. Although Freud has occasionally
shifted his attention to other subjects like urban landscapes, it is the
fleshy body of nudes that continue to occupy his attention. Freud often
paints the same sitter several times - as his work involves showing the
inner character of a person, he feels the more he paints them, the more
chance he has to truly represent them, physically and emotionally.
Freud continues to life and work in his studio in Holland Park, London.
He has been married several times and it is rumoured that he has fathered
up to 40 illegitimate children. Freud has had several major retrospectives,
including one at the Scottish National Gallery and the Tate Britain. Shortlisted
for the prestigious Turner
Prize, Freud's work commands great respect around the world. He is
seen as one of the best living realist
artists, and one of the greatest 20th
century painters of the representational genre.
Selected Exhibitions
1944: Lefevre Gallery, London
1947: The London Gallery
1950: Hanover Gallery, London
1954: British Pavilion Venice Biennale
1958: Marlborough Fine Art, London
1972: Anthony d'Offay, London
1974: Retrospective, Hayward Gallery, London
1979: Davis & Long Co, New York
1983: Thomas Agnew & Sons, London
Selected Group Exhibitions
1948: 'Forty Years of Modern Art', Institute of Contemporary Art, London
1950: 'London-Paris', Institute of Contemporary Art, London
1953: 'Portraits by Contemporary British Artists' Marlborough Fine Art,
London
1962: 'British Self Portraits from Sickert to the Present Day', Arts Council
1966: 'British Painting since 1945', Tate Gallery, London
1976: 'The Human Clay', Arts Council of Great Britain, Hayward Gallery
1979: 'The British Art Show', Arts Council of Great Britain.
1981: 'Eight Figurative Artists', Yale Center for British Art, New Haven
1984: 'The Hard Won Image', Tate Gallery
1986: 'Forty Years of Modern Art', Tate Gallery
1987: 'British Art in the 20th Century', Royal Academy of Arts.
1987: 'A School of London: Six Figurative Painters', Kunstnernes Hus,
Oslo; Museum of Modern Art, Louisiana; Museo d'Arte Moderna, Venice; Kunstmuseum,
Dusseldorf.
Paintings by Lucian Freud can be seen in
several of the best art museums throughout
the world, including the Tate Gallery London.
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