Lucian Freud

Well the Freud family are certainly a talented bunch: there's good old Doctor Sigmund, the funny chap Clement from Just a Minute, Bella who writes about lipstick or something, novelist Esther, and, of course, the big man of Twentieth Century British painting, Lucian Freud.

We have to confess to not being the biggest fans of Lucian Freud. Francis Bacon was one of the greatest British artists of all time and Frank Auerbach is pretty cool too. But Freud seems kind of just a half-way house between the two.

Of course, nobody else agrees with that: Freud is generally considered a genius. His steadfast commitment to realist painting, whilst everybody else was off installing or happening or what have you, is certainly admirable. His painterly technique - characterized by heavy impasto and a preponderance of melancholic beige - is probably unsurpassed.

Freud's works capture strong emotions - sadness, realisation, despair, hope - and the grit of human existence, but somehow without resorting to bombast. In fact, scrub what we said earlier, Freud truly is one of the greats.

Web

• Wikipedia