An artist known for his ‘paintings of people’

'I've always wanted to create drama in my pictures, which is why I paint people. It's people who have brought drama to pictures from the beginning. The simplest human gestures tell stories.' This statement by Lucian Freud (1922 – 2011), one of the most important and influential artists of his generation, had ‘paintings of people’ at the core of his oeuvre.

A new exhibition at London’s National Portrait Gallery, spanning over seventy years, is the first to focus on his portraiture. Established with the criteria that the Gallery was to be about history, not about art, and about the status of the sitter, rather than the quality or character of a particular image considered as a work of art, the gallery still uses this criterion while deciding which works enter its collection.

Produced in close collaboration with the late Lucian Freud, the exhibition concentrates on particular periods and groups of sitters which illustrate Freud's stylistic development and technical virtuosity. Insightful paintings of the artist's lovers, friends and family, referred to by the artist as the 'people in my life', will demonstrate the psychological drama and unrelenting observational intensity of his work.

Featuring over 100 works from museums and private collections throughout the world, some of which have never been seen before, this is an unmissable opportunity to experience the work of one of the world's greatest artists.

The apparent restriction of the title is not much of a limitation in reality since to the legendary artist a picture of just about anything was nothing but a portrait - certainly a depiction of an individual sans any clothes (to the artist, ‘a naked portrait’).

Had he lived, this exhibit would have marked the artist’s 90th birthday year. And as it is, the event will be the first ever opportunity for almost a decade to view a retrospective in the city of London of works by a painter who growingly looks not only like one of the great British artists, but among the most influential ones of the past 50 years or so anywhere.