Leonard Woolf
English political theorist, author, publisher and civil servant (1880-1969)
Lucian Freud was a renowned British painter and portraitist, known for his figurative art and psychological examinations of his subjects. Born in Berlin, he moved to England in 1933 to escape Nazism and later became a British citizen. Freud’s paintings are often somber and thickly painted, reflecting his intense and private nature.
Table of Contents
Family Info
Siblings
Stephen Gabriel Freud
Spouses
Kitty Garman
Caroline Blackwood
Children
Annie Freud
Annabel Freud
Alexander Boyt
Rose Boyt
Isabel Boyt
Susie Boyt
Jane McAdam Freud
Paul Freud
Lucy Freud
David McAdam Freud
Bella Freud
Esther Freud
Francis Eliot
Frank Paul
About the Lucian Freud
Lucian Michael Freud 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. 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.
Frequently Asked Questions
Lucian Freud was a British painter and draughtsman, specializing in figurative art and known as one of the foremost 20th-century English portraitists.
Lucian Freud was born in Berlin, the son of Jewish architect Ernst L. Freud and the grandson of Sigmund Freud. His family moved to England in 1933 when he was 10 years old to escape the rise of Nazism.
Lucian Freud’s early career as a painter was influenced by surrealism, but by the early 1950s, his paintings tended towards realism, often with a stark and alienated style.
Lucian Freud’s paintings are generally somber and thickly impastoed, often set in unsettling interiors and urban landscapes. They are known for their psychological penetration and discomforting examination of the relationship between the artist and the model.
Lucian Freud worked from life studies and was known for asking his models to sit for extended and punishing sessions, reflecting his intense and private nature.
During the Second World War, Lucian Freud served at sea with the British Merchant Navy.
From 1942 to 1943, Lucian Freud attended Goldsmiths’ College in London.
25 Quotes by Lucian Freud
- 1.
Painting is sometimes like those recipes where you do all manner of elaborate things to a duck, and then end up putting it on one side and only using the skin.
Lucian FreudBritish painter and engraver (1922-2011)
- 2.
The painter must give a completely free rein to any feeling or sensations he may have and reject nothing to which he is naturally drawn.
Lucian FreudBritish painter and engraver (1922-2011)
- 3.
I remember Francis Bacon would say that he felt he was giving art what he thought it previously lacked. With me, it’s what Yeats called the fascination with what’s difficult. I’m only trying to do what I can’t do.
Lucian FreudBritish painter and engraver (1922-2011)
- 4.
As far as I am concerned the paint is the person. I want it to work for me just as flesh does.
Lucian FreudBritish painter and engraver (1922-2011)
- 5.
Now that I know what I want, I don’t have to hold on to it quite so much.
Lucian FreudBritish painter and engraver (1922-2011)
- 6.
When I look at a body it gives me choice of what to put in a painting, what will suit me and what won’t.
Lucian FreudBritish painter and engraver (1922-2011)
- 7.
And, since the model he faithfully copies is not going to be hung up next to the picture, since the picture is going to be there on its own, it is of no interest whether it is an accurate copy of the model.
Lucian FreudBritish painter and engraver (1922-2011)
- 8.
Since the model he so faithfully copies is not going to be hung up next to the picture… it is of no interest whether it is an accurate copy of the model.
Lucian FreudBritish painter and engraver (1922-2011)
- 9.
I would wish my portraits to be of the people, not like them. Not having a look of the sitter, being them.
Lucian FreudBritish painter and engraver (1922-2011)
- 10.
The model should only serve the very private function for the painter of providing the starting point for his excitement.
Lucian FreudBritish painter and engraver (1922-2011)
- 11.
A painter must think of everything he sees as being there entirely for his own use and pleasure.
Lucian FreudBritish painter and engraver (1922-2011)
- 12.
Whether it will convince or not, depends entirely on what it is in itself, what is there to be seen.
Lucian FreudBritish painter and engraver (1922-2011)
- 13.
The aura given out by a person or object is as much a part of them as their flesh.
Lucian FreudBritish painter and engraver (1922-2011)
- 14.
I want paint to work as flesh.
Lucian FreudBritish painter and engraver (1922-2011)
- 15.
The longer you look at an object, the more abstract it becomes, and, ironically, the more real.
Lucian FreudBritish painter and engraver (1922-2011)
- 16.
The character of the artist doesn’t enter into the nature of the art.
Lucian FreudBritish painter and engraver (1922-2011)
- 17.
There is a distinction between fact and truth. Truth has an element of revelation about it. If something is true, it does more than strike one as merely being so.
Lucian FreudBritish painter and engraver (1922-2011)
- 18.
I paint people not because of what they are like, not exactly in spite of what they are like, but how they happen to be.
Lucian FreudBritish painter and engraver (1922-2011)
- 19.
The picture is all he feels about it, all he thinks worth preserving of it, all he invests it with. If all the qualities which a painter took from the model for his picture were really taken, no person could be painted twice.
Lucian FreudBritish painter and engraver (1922-2011)
- 20.
My work is purely autobiographical… It is about myself and my surroundings.
Lucian FreudBritish painter and engraver (1922-2011)
- 21.
A painter’s tastes must grow out of what so obsesses him in life that he never has to ask himself what it is suitable for him to do in art.
Lucian FreudBritish painter and engraver (1922-2011)
- 22.
I am only interested in painting the actual person, in doing a painting of them, not in using them to some ulterior end of art. For me, to use someone doing something not native to them would be wrong.
Lucian FreudBritish painter and engraver (1922-2011)
- 23.
The paintings that really excite me have an erotic element or side to them irrespective of subject matter.
Lucian FreudBritish painter and engraver (1922-2011)
- 24.
Full, saturated colours have an emotional significance I want to avoid.
Lucian FreudBritish painter and engraver (1922-2011)
- 25.
The painter’s obsession with his subject is all that he needs to drive him to work.
Lucian FreudBritish painter and engraver (1922-2011)