Freud, Lucian

Freud, Lucian, 1922–, British painter, b. Berlin. A grandson of Sigmund Freud, he settled in England in 1933 and became a British subject in 1939. Freud is widely regarded as one of the world's finest figurative painters. Maintaining a restrained palette, he has moved from an emphasis on draftsmanship to a more tactile quality. He is especially known for highly expressive, heavily impastoed nudes and portraits painted with a disquieting realism that is at once brutally emphatic and richly detailed. Freud's intensely naked nudes, including Painter and Model (1986–87) and Naked Man, Back View (1992; Metropolitan Museum), have an almost meaty physicality. In portraiture, his best-known works include many self-portraits, for example Reflection with Children (1965) and Painter Working, Reflection (1993), and such works as Francis Bacon (1952; Tate Gallery), David Hockney (2002), and several portraits of his mother (1971–76).

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2007, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

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