Woman with an Arm Tattoo (Hartley 54; Figura 40), 1996
Lucian Freud is considered one of the most important figurative painters of the past century. The son of architect Ernst Freud and grandson of Sigmund Freud, the artist became famous for his unsparing, psychological translations of the human body into loose brushwork and richly applied color. His portraits—of lovers, friends, family, and celebrities such as David Hockney, Kate Moss, and Queen Elizabeth II—are fleshy, honest, tender, and complex. Freud has been the subject of retrospectives at institutions around the world, including the Royal Academy of Art, Tate Britain, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His work can be found in the public collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art, the Centre Pompidou, and the National Gallery of Australia, among others. On the secondary market, many of Freud’s works have notched more than $10 million.