Francis Wyndham 1993

This is a portrait of Francis Wyndham by Lucian Freud, painted with oil on canvas. Freud was a master of the fleshy and flawed. I can imagine him, brush loaded, circling Wyndham like a hawk, trying to trap the essence of this man through layers of thick, almost sculptural paint. Look at the way the pink of the shirt clashes and merges with the skin tones, creating a kind of raw, visceral energy. The brushstrokes are like tiny jabs, building up the form, the weight of his face, the very gravity of being human. There’s a kind of fearless honesty in Freud's work that’s both compelling and unsettling, reminiscent of Auerbach or Kossoff. It’s like he’s saying, "Here we are, in all our messy, imperfect glory." And there’s a real beauty in that, a kind of tough tenderness. I think that is what painting is all about.