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Lucian Freud: 1922 – 2011

December 8, 2017 By Wendy Campbell

Lucien Freud - photo by Jane Brown

Lucien Freud – photo by Jane Brown

Born on December 8, 1922, in Berlin, Germany, Lucian Michael Freud was a British painter and draughtsman and considered to be the leading figurative painter of his time. Freud was the son of the architect Ernst Freud and the grandson of renowned neurologist and psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. His family fled from Nazi Germany to England in 1932, and Freud became a British citizen in 1939. He studied briefly at the Central School of Art in London and then at the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing, Dedham, under the painter Cedric Morris.  Apart from spending a year in Paris and Greece, Freud lived and worked in the inner-city area of Paddington, London.

Freud’s early works were created with thin layers of paint depicting people, plants and animals in odd juxtapositions. He was also loosely associated with Neo-Romanticism as evidenced by the intense, bulbous eyes that are characterized in his early portraits.

In 1948, Freud married Kitty Garman, daughter of sculptor Jacob Epstein, with whom he had two daughters. The marriage ended in 1952 and in 1953, he married Caroline Blackwood, whom he divorced in 1959.

From the 1950s, Freud began to work in portraiture, often nudes, using an impasto technique. He began to pull away from Neo-Romanticism and developed his own style with portraits that were “more tactile, demonstrating an almost sculptural fascination with flesh and its contours. Freud abandoned the fine lines of his early work for broader strokes – swapping sable brushes for hogshair – and began to work with a more limited palette in which greasy whites and meaty reds predominated. His subjects were also often foreshortened or seen from a peculiar angle, a change in technique brought on by Freud’s beginning to paint while standing up rather than sitting.” Freud’s paintings are decidedly moody, depicting a “physical ugliness” and a sense of alienation.

Although working mostly with the human form, Freud also painted cityscapes seen from his studio window, as well as highly detailed nature studies.

On the personal side, Freud was known for having bitter feuds, most notably with his close friend Francis Bacon, his patron Lord Glenconner, and his dealer, James Kirkman. He is known to have had at least 13 children and rumoured to have many more. He was an eccentric and refused to have a telephone in his studio, and until the late 1980s he could only be contacted by telegram.

Freud exhibited regularly and had several retrospective exhibitions including at the Hayward Gallery, London, in 1998 and at Tate Britain in 2002, as well as solo exhibitions in New York, Edinburgh, Los Angeles, Venice, Dublin, The Hague and Paris. He was appointed a Companion of Honour in 1983, and a member of the Order of Merit in 1993.

Freud painted into his old age and vowed never to give up working, stating that he intended to “paint himself to death”. He died at his home on July 20, 2011 after a brief illness.

For full biographical information, visit the source links below.

Lucian Freud - Benefits Supervisor Sleeping - 1995
Lucian Freud - Girl with a Kitten - 1947
Lucian Freud - John Minton - 1952
Lucian Freud - Reflection With Two Children - 1965v
Lucian Freud - Reflection - Self Portrait - 1985
Lucian Freud - Naked Man On a Bed - 1987
Lucian Freud - Blonde Girl on a Bed - 1987
Lucian Freud - The Painter's Mother
Lucian Freud - Queen Elizabeth II - 2000-2001
Lucian Freud - Girl with a White Dog - 1951-51

Sources: MoMA, Telegraph.co.uk, Wikipedia, BBC

Filed Under: ART, Art History, Painting Tagged With: British Art, figurative painting, German Art, Lucian Freud, Portrait Painting

Sean Cheetham: Painting

February 19, 2012 By Wendy Campbell

Born in 1977, California based painter Sean Cheetham has a BFA from the Center College of Design in Pasadena, California where he has also worked as an instructor.

Cheetham’s latest work is on show now at Katherine Cone Gallery in Los Angeles. “Champagne Wishes and Caviar Dreams”, an ostentatious way of wishing some one the best in life, is an ironic, yet perfect title for Cheetham’s new series of classical, but edgy paintings of the figure. He is a skilled and accomplished draftsman, and his painting approach pays homage to academic painting traditions. His portraits are striking and are direct portrayals of his subjects, some with a hint of dark humour. Many of his subjects are of lone women wearing elaborate outfits that reveal an abstract level in the details.”

To see more, visit SheanCheetham.blogspot.com.



Filed Under: ART Tagged With: American Art, Katherine Cone Gallery, Portrait Painting, Sean Cheetham

Kris Lewis: New Works – David B. Smith Gallery

May 19, 2011 By Wendy Campbell

Los Angeles based painter Kris Lewis has a new exhibition opening May 20, 2011 at David B. Smith Gallery in Denver, Colorado.  “Lewis’s portraits are unique in the emotional involvement he invokes in his viewers. His works depict characters caught between strength and fragility, creating a feeling of mystery and isolation. They are painted within environments that are both unexpected and out of the ordinary. Lewis explains, “I want them to be real, but off slightly, so that viewers ask, what is odd about this?” The figures are incredibly realistic, but somewhere in the portrait is a subtle distortion of the figure itself, the perspective, or the environment that the person could not, or should not be in. Through the facial expressions, the gestures, and the physical presentation of the individual, Lewis expresses powerful emotions, which pull the viewer into the painting, fully intrigued with the story behind the portrait. In each piece, Lewis weaves an existence replete with love, conflict, beauty, tradition, fear or isolation.”

The exhibition runs through June 18, 2011. For more information, visit David B. Smith Gallery and KrisLewisArt.com.




Filed Under: ART Tagged With: American Art, Kris Lewis, Portrait Painting

Lu Cong: Painting

July 2, 2010 By Wendy Campbell

liza-3-lu-cong

Born in Shanghai, China in 1978, and immigrating to the U.S. in 1989, Lu Cong is a Chinese/American portrait artist. Cong graduated from the University of Iowa with a degree in Biology and Art in 2000. That same year, he moved to Denver in an “effort to delay entry to medical school.” He rented a small studio on Capital Hill and began to teach himself to paint in oils.

In 2005, Cong made Southwest Art Magazine’s annual list of twenty one artists to watch under the age of 31. In 2008 he was named as one of five “Today’s Masters Making Their Marks” by Fine Art Connoisseur magazine.

Cong is regarded by many as one of the “most distinctive young artists to recently emerge from the American West. His paintings center around the faces of his carefully chosen subjects. His style pays homage to 18th Century Romantics, yet it is unmistakably conceived in and relevant to the contemporary era.”

For more information about Lu Cong, visit LuCong.com.




Sources: Artnet

Filed Under: ART Tagged With: American Art, Chinese Art, Lu Cong, Portrait Painting

Kris Lewis: Painting

June 27, 2010 By Wendy Campbell

rosezephyr-kris-lewis

More fantastic portraits for you by American painter Kris Lewis. Check out more of his work at KrisLewisArt.com.




Filed Under: ART Tagged With: American Art, Kris Lewis, Portrait Painting

Mary Jane Ansell: Painting

December 3, 2009 By Wendy Campbell

Porcelain II - Study of a Girl © Mary Jane Ansell

Porcelain II - Study of a Girl © Mary Jane Ansell

This wonderful portrait is by UK artist Mary Jane Ansell.  Ansell graduated from Brighton University in 1994 and currently works from her studio in Brighton’s North Laine.  She has exhibited with the Royal Society of Portrait Painters and has won numerous awards. Ansell was also a finalist for the BP Portrait Award in 2004 and 2009.

To see more of Ansell’s work, visit MaryJaneAnsell.com.


Filed Under: ART, Women in Visual Arts Tagged With: Mary Jane Ansell, Portrait Painting

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