Annie and Alice 1975

Lucian Freud made this intimate painting on a small canvas with oil paint. The painting's surface is worked with soft pinks and beiges, with a few dark touches describing the figures. You can feel the artist thinking about how to build a figure from a collection of brush marks. Each mark is like a little search, feeling for the form. I can imagine Freud looking very intently at his subjects, trying to figure out how to make the body real on canvas. The figures seem heavy, real, and present. It’s like he’s trying to find the weight and solidity of the body. He was definitely having a conversation with other painters, like Courbet. What does it mean to look at the body? How can painting capture life? There is a sense of freedom in this work, where there are many ways to see and feel.