The original,
unnerving, sustained artistic achievement of Lucian Freud, who has died aged 88, had at its
heart a wilful, restless personality, fired by his intelligence and
attentiveness and his suspicion of method, never wanting to risk doing the same
thing twice. The sexually loaded, penetrating gaze was part of his weaponry,
but his art addressed the lives of individuals, whether life models or royalty,
with delicacy and disturbing corporeality.
Freud had a reputation for pushing
subjects to an extreme. But unlike the American painters to emerge in the
1950s, his approach was in the western tradition of working from life and
brought about with painstaking slowness, rather than unleashed virtuosity. Photographs
taken in the studio by his assistant, model and good friend, the painter David Dawson, show Freud working from a roughly sketched charcoal
form, the paint slowly spreading outwards from the head. Some canvases were
extended, others abandoned while still a fragment.
Lucian Freud with Martin Gayford in 2010. Photograph: David Dawson
Lucian Freud, considered one of Britain
Freud died
Wednesday night at his home in London after a
brief illness, said William Acquavella, owner of Acquavella Galleries in New York
"He
lived to paint and painted until the day he died, far removed from the noise of
the art world," Acquavella said.
Freud,
grandson of Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, was known for his
portraits of human figures, especially his nudes.
Among his
famous works are Girl With a White Dog, a portrait of his first wife that
hangs in the Tate Gallery in London, and a 2001 portrait of Queen Elizabeth II
that was controversial because it was not beautiful.He painted regular people,
often family members and friends, sometimes with their pets, layering thick
gobs of paint on the canvas to convey fleshy curves.
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