Lucian Freud

 Lucian Freud was a German-born British painter. Known primarily for his thickly impastoed portrait and figure paintings.

"I paint people," Freud said, "not because of what they are like, not exactly in spite of what they are like, but how they happen to be."

Cedric Morris 1940

 Freud's early paintings, which are mostly very small, are often associated with German Expressionism and Surrealism in depicting people, plants and animals in unusual juxtapositions. Some very early works anticipate the varied flesh tones of his mature style, for example 'Cedric Morris' 

man with a thistle

       After the end of the war he developed a thinly painted very precise linear style with muted colours, best known in his self-portrait Man with Thistle and a series of large-eyed portraits of his first wife, Kitty Garman, such as Girl with a Kitten These were painted with tiny sable brushes and evoked Early Netherlandish painting

Freud's portraits often depict only the sitter, sometimes sprawled naked on the floor or on a bed or alternatively juxtaposed with something else, as in Girl With a White Dog (1951–52) and Naked Man With Rat (1977–78) According to Edward Chaney, "The distinctive, recumbent manner in which Freud poses so many of his sitters suggests the conscious of unconscious influence both of his grandfather's psychoanalytical couch and of the Egyptian mummy, his dreaming figures, clothed or nude, staring into space until (if ever) brought back to health and/or consciousness. The particular application of this supine pose to freaks, friends, wives, mistresses, dogs, daughters and mother alike (the latter regularly depicted after her suicide attempt and eventually, literally mummy-like in death), tends to support this hypothesis."

 The use of animals in his compositions is widespread, and often he features a pet and its owner. Other examples of portraits with both animals and people in Freud's work include Guy and Speck (1980–81), Eli and David (2005–06) and Double Portrait (1985–86).He had a special passion for horses, having enjoyed riding at school in Dartington, where he sometimes slept in the stables. His portraits solely of horses include Grey Gelding (2003), Skewbald Mare (2004), and Mare Eating Hay (2006). Houseplants, often not in peak condition, featured prominently in some portraits, especially in the 1960s, and Freud also produced a number of paintings purely of plants. Other regular features included mattresses in earlier works, and huge piles of the linen rags with which he used to clean his brushes in later ones. Some portraits, especially in the 1980s, have very carefully painted views of London roofscapes seen through the studio windows.