Lucian Freud, one of the greatest painters anywhere, in any era, has died at age 88.
Freud's lovely, ominous, sad, defiantly unsentimental portraits were somehow both startlingly modern and timeless. He managed to flatter his subjects by not flattering them. And while his art contemporaries surfed the waves of multiple –isms, Freud’s straightforward, people first approach may have made him the most radical of them all. When future generations want to learn something about how it felt to live in our times, they only need to look at a Lucian Freud portrait --- it felt like that.
A fascinating look at Lucian Freud, his work and the people he painted, is here.