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The grandson of Sigmund, nephew of Anna, brother of Clement and father of Ester, Lucien Freud is the most successful and respected painter living in Britain today. He was born in Berlin in 1922, before emigrating with the rest of the clan to Britain following the ascension of Adolph Hitler to the German Chancellorship in 1933. He has been a British citizen since 1939.

As a child, he was educated at several institutions including Dartington Hall and Bryanston School, where he gained a reputation for being a tearaway (he was even suspected of burning one school to the ground).  After trying, but failing, to join the Merchant Navy in 1941, he received an artistic education at the Central School of Art and the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing where he excelled under the tutelage of Cedric Morris.

As a young man he quickly became an important figure in the artistic circles of London.  His first exhibition was at the Lefevre Gallery in the West End in 1944. He searched France and Italy for inspiration in 1946 and, following his return to London and a sojourn into surrealism, began painting portraits almost exclusively in 1950.

Freud is known for painting grotesque, erotic portraits. He views his subjects as ugly, yet fascinating. He is renowned for his nudes, in which the subject is often sprawled out flat or juxtaposed with another object. His work is often overtly autobiographical, with subjects including members of his own family, friends and lovers.

His most famous painting is probably After Cezzane, which was sold to the National Gallery of Australia for over four million pounds. He painted a well-known series of portraits of the performance artist Leigh Bowery between 1990 and Bowery’s death in 1994. Other notable subjects for his portraits have included a pregnant Kate Moss, which sold for $9.35 million in 2005. He continues to live and work in London.