Lucian Freud

Lucian Freud
Freud in 2005
Born
Lucian Michael Freud

(1922-12-08)8 December 1922
Died20 July 2011(2011-07-20) (aged 88)
London, England
Education
Notable work
Spouses
(m. 1948; div. 1952)
(m. 1952; div. 1959)
ChildrenVarious, including Annie, Esther, and Bella
FatherErnst L. Freud
RelativesFreud family

Lucian Michael Freud OM CH[1] (/frɔɪd/; 8 December 1922 – 20 July 2011) was a British painter and draughtsman, specialising in figurative art, and is known as one of the foremost 20th-century English portraitists. He was born in Berlin, the son of Jewish architect Ernst L. Freud and the grandson of Sigmund Freud. Freud got his first name "Lucian" from his mother in memory of the ancient writer Lucian of Samosata. His family moved to England in 1933, when he was 10 years old, to escape the rise of Nazism. He became a British naturalized citizen in 1939. From 1942 to 1943 he attended Goldsmiths' College, London. He served at sea with the British Merchant Navy during the Second World War.

His early career as a painter was influenced by surrealism, but by the early 1950s his often stark and alienated paintings tended towards realism.[2] Freud was an intensely private and guarded man, and his paintings, completed over a 60-year career, are mostly of friends and family. They are generally sombre and thickly impastoed, often set in unsettling interiors and urban landscapes. The works are noted for their psychological penetration and often discomforting examination of the relationship between artist and model. Freud worked from life studies, and was known for asking for extended and punishing sittings from his models.[3]

  1. ^ "Lucian Freud, OM". The Daily Telegraph. London. 21 July 2011. Archived from the original on 12 January 2022. Retrieved 8 March 2020. Freud was appointed a Companion of Honour in 1983, and a member of the Order of Merit in 1993.
  2. ^ "Lucian Freud 1922–2011. Tate. Retrieved October 2016
  3. ^ Smith, Roberta (14 December 2007). "Lucian Freud Stripped Bare". The New York Times. Retrieved 22 July 2011.