Lucian Freud is one of the leading portraitists in contemporary art: His unflinching gaze on the human body sets new standards for portraiture and nude painting and is largely known for works featuring impasto. This volume pays tribute to Lucian Freud’s graphic oeuvre for the first time. Over six decades, he created extraordinary etchings that offer a private glimpse into his artistic practice and are presented here in high-quality reproductions.

Lucian Freud’s unflinching gaze on the human body has set new standards for portraiture and redefined nude painting. With his preference for dramatically cropped figures against a blank background, the artist continues to generate astonishing psychological tension and formal abstraction in his images to this day.

He is best known for his paintings with impasto; his etchings, however—which constitute an important part of his body of work—have been largely inaccessible to the public until now and are published in this volume. They primarily transport the viewer into a private setting. The subjects—mostly friends, family members, or other artists—whom Lucian Freud sketched sat face-to-face with him in front of his easel during the sessions. As if painting a canvas, he would place the copper plates upright on the easel and draw directly onto them: fine lines that formed a net-like pattern into expressive figures, which were then printed onto paper.

“Portraits” features a wealth of brilliant graphic works and an essay by the renowned curator Norman Rosenthal, who knew Lucian Freud personally.