Portraits are at the heart of Lucian Freud's oeuvre. This study of Freud's portraits, first published in English in 2012, surveys seven decades of activity, from the early 1940s to the artist's death in 2011 and features 130 paintings, drawings, and engravings from public and private collections. A series of previously unpublished interviews with Michael Auping held between May 2009 and January 2011 reveal Freud's opinions on the complex relationship the artist builds with his model, on the difficulty of painting nudes and self-portraits, and on the painters he admired most. He was personally reserved, but established a very close relationship with his sitters behind the closed doors of his studio. The many subjects Freud portrayed include members of his family, especially his mother Lucy, and other artists, such as Frank Auerbach, Francis Bacon, and David Hockney.


Text in French.

Interviewer(s): Michael Auping
Interviewee(s): Lucian Freud
Contributions by: John Richardson