Boy's Head 1952

Lucian Freud made this portrait of a boy with oil on canvas, sometime during his long career. You can see the slow, deliberate act of image-making – the searching, the fixing, and the building of layers. I can imagine Freud, cigarette in mouth, squinting at his subject, trying to fix him on the canvas. Look how the light catches the boy’s brow and cheek, the fleshy tones built up with such care. Freud really scrutinizes the boy. It makes me think about the weight of sitting for a portrait. And the colours! The umbers and ochres, with these moments of cooler blues and greys, come together to create this really grounded, earthy feel. You can see it echoed across his paintings. Freud draws you into the shared experience of ‘being’, of seeing, of painting. We are all in it together!