Lucian Freud British, 1922-2011

Lucian Freud (8 December 1922 - 20 July 2011) was a British painter and draughtsman, widely regarded as one of the foremost figurative painters of the 20th century.

Freud was born in Berlin, the son of architect Ernst L.Freud and the grandson of Sigmund Freud. Freud's 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 Goldsmith's College, London (during which time he befriended Francis Bacon). He served with the British Merchant Navy during World War II.

His early career as a painter was influenced by surrealism however by the early 1950s his practise leant towards realism. Throughout his life Freud was an intensely private and guarded man and his paintings, completed over a 60-year span, remain mostly of friends and family. Freud's works are generally sombre and thickly impastoed, often set in unsettling interiors and urban landscapes and noted for their psychological penetration and often discomforting examination of the relationship between artist and model. Freud worked from life studies, and was well-known for asking for extended and punishing sittings from his models.

During the course of his career he achieved widespread success and critical acclaim, notably painting a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II between 2000 and 2001. In 1983 Freud was appointed a Companion of Honour, and a member of the Order of Merit in 1993. Freud died on July 20, 2011 at the age of 88 in London, United Kingdom.

Today, his works are held in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Tate Gallery in London, and the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid, among others.