Man with a Blue Scarf

Lucian Freud, widely regarded as the greatest figurative painter of our time, spent seven months painting a portrait of the art critic Martin Gayford.

The daily narrative takes the reader into that most private place, the artist’s studio and to the heart of the working methods of this modern master – both technical and subtly psychological. From this emerges an understanding of what a portrait is, but something else is also built up: a portrait, in words, of Freud himself.

This is not a biography, but a series ?of close-ups: the artist at work, and in conversation in restaurants, taxis and his studio. It takes the reader into the company of a painter for whom Picasso, Giacometti, Francis Bacon, George Orwell and W.H. Auden were friends and contemporaries.

The book is illustrated with many of Lucian Freud’s other ?works. Photographs taken by David Dawson of Freud at work are here as well as images by earlier artists discussed by Freud with Gayford such as Van Gogh and Titian.