Man's Head (Self Portrait I) 1963
Lucian Freud (1922–2011)
The Whitworth, The University of Manchester
Lucian Freud (b Berlin, 8 Dec. 1922; d London, 21 July 2011). German-born British painter, draughtsman, and etcher, a grandson of Sigmund Freud. He moved to England with his parents in 1933, and acquired British nationality in 1939. His earliest love was drawing, and he began to work full time as an artist after being invalided out of the Merchant Navy in 1942. In 1951 his Interior at Paddington (Walker AG, Liverpool) won a prize at the Festival of Britain, and after this he built up a formidable reputation as one of the most powerful contemporary figurative painters. Portraits and nudes are his specialities, often observed in arresting close-up. He preferred to paint people he knew well: 'If you don't know them, it can only be like a travel book.'
Text source: The Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (Oxford University Press)
