Head of a Boy 1953

Lucian Freud painted this small head of a boy with oil on canvas, and I can only imagine how he built it up, layer by layer. See how the colors shift subtly across the planes of the face. There’s this sort of fleshy pink in the cheeks that moves into a greenish-yellow in the forehead and chin. It makes you think about how light and shadow play on skin. The texture is really interesting, too—a sort of dry, scrubby surface that gives the painting this raw, immediate quality. Freud was known for his intense focus on the human figure, so I bet he spent hours just looking at the boy’s face, trying to capture every detail. The way he’s defined the eyes with these dark, almost worried lines, suggests not just what he looks like, but what he might be thinking. It's as if Freud is saying, "let's really see each other." That's what makes painting so powerful. It allows us to connect with others across time and space.