Lucian Freud is one of the greatest British painters of the twentieth century and is commonly associated with the School of London and a circle of friends including Michael Andrews, Frank Auerbach, Francis Bacon, R. B. Kitaj and Leon Kossoff.

Since the 1940s he has obsessively painted, drawn and etched those close to him in painstaking works in which his stated aim is to embody the presence of the subject before him.