Freud's main subject and fascination lay with the human face and body, which he explored through portraits of those close to him.
Read MoreAmong his first subjects were the artist himself, and early paintings such as Man with a Feather (Self-Portrait) (1943) and Man with a Thistle (Self-Portrait) (1946) show Freud's interest in capturing various details and textures.
When painting other people, the artist spent prolonged periods of time observing them, even requiring them to hold a pose for hours in a single session. Regular sitters from the 1940s and 50s include Charlie Lumley, a teenage boy and Freud's neighbour in Delamere Terrace, Paddington, and Kitty Garman, Freud's first wife and sculptor Jacob Epstein's daughter.
The artist initially painted while seated, studying his subjects from a short distance, and favoured muted colours and sharply delineated forms as seen in his portrait of Garman in Girl with a Kitten (1947).
In the early 1950s, Freud began to loosen his brushwork and employ a wider range of colours. It was also during this decade that he began to paint standing, which allowed him to pay special attention to the physicality of the human body, and continued throughout his career.
Freud is also recognised for his nude portraits and studies that he began to paint frequently from the mid-1960s.
Among his regular models were the artist and fashion designer Leigh Bowery and artist's model and writer Sue Tilley, whom Freud portrayed in different poses—seated, standing, reclined, and even from the back.
Always painted from life, and from a pose that the models felt comfortable with, Freud's paintings and drawings reflect his exploration of the human body through its curves and concaves, excesses and recesses, and planes and substances with weight.
In 1993, Freud painted his seminal self-portrait Painter Working, Reflection, which shows the artist standing, nude but for unlaced boots, and holding the tools of his trade in his hands.
Freud was close friends with the Irish-born painter Francis Bacon for more than four decades, until they fell out in 1985. Now regarded as two representative figures of contemporary British figurative painting, the two artists shared a commitment to the human figure while diverging in Bacon's preference to work from photographic images and Freud's practice working with live models. They also painted each other, including Bacon's Three Studies of Lucian Freud (1969), a triptych of oil paintings that show Freud sitting on a wooden chair in a cage from three slightly different vantage points.
