Lucian Freud Art for Sale: Prints & Originals

Lucian
Freud

Lucian Freud, one of the 20th Century’s most celebrated painters, is known for his piercing, unflinching portraits of the human body. If you’re looking for original Lucian Freud prints and editions for sale or would like to sell, request a complimentary valuation and browse our network’s most in-demand works.

Biography

Lucian Freud, grandson of famed psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, was a German-born artist famed for his penetrating life studies. Over his 60-year career, Freud’s work set a new standard for the representation of the human flesh and of the Nude, confronting psychological and imperfect physical aspects of the human body - often through his thick impasto technique. Remaining consistent in style and in unflinching intensity, Freud painted only himself, close friends, and family - maintaining his reputation as an extremely private individual.

Born in Berlin in 1922, Freud moved to England with his family in 1933 to escape the rise of Nazism. Here, he attended Goldsmiths College from 1942. His early works are often considered to be influenced by Surrealism and feature absurdist motifs such as a bloated stuffed zebra and a palm tree. Soon, however, he began to privilege images of the human form, which led him to leave to the side these early Surrealist and absurdist motifs.

Despite a well-received first solo exhibition at the Lefevre Gallery in 1944, it was only in the 1950s that a fascination with the human flesh began to dominate Freud's work, marking the beginning of his widespread success.

Girl with a White Dog, (1950-51) attests to the development of Freud’s signature style. The muse is Freud’s own wife, Kitty Garman, who reclines on a sofa facing the viewer directly. Despite the flatness and Freud’s signature analytic distance from the sitter, the clear focus on her exposed skin suggests a sense of intimacy with her body that would come to define his later nude portraits.

Soon, this interest in the human form led the artist to make a number of self-portraits, where the expressive brushstrokes and harsh texture reflect a sense of internal critique and turmoil. For instance, in his famous 1985 Reflection, painted when the artist was 63 years old, the layers of paint highlight Freud’s unflinching approach to his own haggard, sagging skin.

In another example, Benefits Supervisor Resting (1994) Freud’s hyperfixation on the tonal components of the flesh is well-evident. The work is part of a series depicting sitter Sue Tilley, a government worker, whom he used to essentially reimagine the classical recumbent nude. Looking at the image, one’s eye cannot help but travel across the unflattering study of the folds and textures of the human form. While all of the works from this series have been well received, this particular portrait is considered to be the ultimate Freud artwork, with Brett Gorvy describing the work as ‘reud’s masterpiece…[it] proclaims him as one of the greatest painters of the human form in history, alongside Rembrandt and Rubens.'

Aside from an early nod to Surrealism, Freud was heavily influenced (particularly in his earlier works) by artists from the Slade School, such as Stanley Spencer, who used mild distortion and overt flatness in his paintings. This influence is particularly clear in Freud’s studies of Kitty Garman.
He was also extremely influenced by Francis Bacon, creating a string of portraits of his fellow artist and sharing his fascination with the human body. This is particularly significant considering Freud’s outward dislike of his more famous artistic predecessors - he once described Picasso as 'poisonous.'
After briefly travelling to France and Greece in the summer of 1946, Freud settled in London permanently. He was considered a part of the ‘School of London’ - a loose group of artists, including Francis Bacon, Frank Auerbach and Leon Kossof whose work rejected Abstract Expressionism which was hugely popular at the time. Indeed, Freud even sat for Bacon, resulting in Bacon’s most expensive recorded painting: Three Studies of Lucian Freud, (1969) which sold for £89.4 million at auction in 2013.
Freud’s relationships and personal life remain a topic of controversy, particularly as he is rumoured to have fathered up to forty children by different women, with only 14 being properly identified today. Throughout the 1940s the artist was rumoured to have had a relationship with artists Adrian Ryan and John Minton. He married Kitty Garman in 1948 after having had an affair with her aunt Lorna Garman and the pair had two daughters before divorcing. Freud went on to marry Lady Caroline Blackwood in 1953, heiress to the Guinness fortune and subject of his work Hotel Bedroom (1954).
In 2001 Freud was commissioned to paint a portrait of the Queen for the Jubilee - a work which received significant criticism in the British press due to its realism and the lack of special artistic treatment she received at his hand. He died in London in 2011 and remained intensely private, he did not vote nor divulge personal information, largely for fear of his personal life swaying people’s opinions of his paintings. He claimed: 'The man is nothing, the work is everything.'

Sold in 2022, a landmark year for the art market, Freud’s Large Interior, W11 (after Watteau) (1981 - 83) made headlines when it emerged from the esteemed Paul G. Allen collection. Allen had originally purchased the painting from Sotheby’s in 1998 for £3.5 million, setting an auction record for Freud at the time. In 2022, the painting shattered another record, selling for an extraordinary £75.8 million. The large-scale canvas is considered a masterpiece of human observation, marking Freud's greatest artistic period. Featuring four sitters–including former lover Suzy Boyt, her son Kai, Freud's daughter Bella and his then-lover Celia Paul–Large Interior, W11 is a profound reflection of Freud’s unflinching gaze on human vulnerability. Set in his London studio and inspired by Jean Antoine Watteau’s Pierrot content, Freud reimagines Watteau’s fête galante. This work remains the highest-valued Freud painting on the public market.