Lucian Freud Portraits

“Kate Moss & Lucian Freud in bed”

David Dawson

2010

Lucian Freud was one of the greatest realist paintings of the twentieth century. Family, friends and lovers were his subjects and sometimes when no-one else was available, himself. Sitters were drawn from all walks of life, from the aristocracy to the criminal underworld, but he rarely took on commissions. Freud's portraits often recorded the life of a relationship. Highly personal and private they are a record of time spent behind the closed door of the studio. The exhibition spans seven decades and is arranged chronologically, beginning with his early explorations of portrait.
Freuds early portraits are very flat and illustrative, they are almost unrecognisable from his later more recognised works.
I must admit I enjoyed the exhibition a lot more than I first thought, looking at Freud's earlier works through to his very last unfinished painting before he passed away last year aged 88. A lot of the paintings have a strange uneasy feeling about them when you catch the eye of the sitter. It has been said that freud would arrange the sitter a certain way, perhaps giving them a chair or just the cold wooden floor to pose upon. Within the paintings are a tremendous amount of detail and tone, what you don't get from looking at the photographs of Freud's work is the harsh texture of the paint. However you can see the way he studies a persons presence and aesthetics, it's almost as though he is describing them through painting them as well as the experience and tensions of being in a room with the sitter.

Images taken from postcards

“Kate Moss & Lucian Freud in bed”

David Dawson 2010

Image available at: http://enversendroit.tumblr.com/post/19230062087/kate-moss-lucian-freud-in-bed-david-dawson. Last Visited. 6th Apr 2012


Man with a Feather (Self-portrait), 1943.
Image available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/gallery/2012/feb/08/lucian-freud-national-portrait-gallery. Last Visisted. 6th Apr 2012