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Lucian Freud

Painter

British·b. 1922

Known for:

scrutinous figurative portraiture; the late large-scale nudes

Education:

Central School of Art, London (briefly); East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing under Cedric Morris; Goldsmiths College

Lucian Freud, grandson of Sigmund Freud, spent more than six decades painting the people in his immediate life - family, friends, studio assistants, the performance artist Leigh Bowery - with a sustained physical scrutiny that treats the painted body as a record of lived experience rather than an idealized form. He built his paint surface slowly, in many layers, and worked for years on individual portraits. His large-scale nudes - including his portrait of the performance artist and fashion designer Leigh Bowery - sold for record prices at auction.

Lucian Freud's Gear List(1)

Winsor & Newton Artists' Oil Colours

Winsor & Newton

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Freud worked with Winsor & Newton Artists' Oil Colours throughout his career; his use of the range is documented in multiple studio interviews and in accounts of his working method, which involved building paint surfaces over many layers using the range's hog hair brushes and oil colours.

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Last updated March 20, 2026

Winsor & Newton has manufactured artists' oil colours in London since 1832, and its professional-grade line remains one of the most widely used in studio painting worldwide. The range covers more than 120 pigments, each ground in cold-pressed linseed or safflower oil to a standard of consistency that has changed little since the nineteenth century. Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon were among the many painters who worked from the Winsor & Newton range throughout their careers.