Lucian Freud

New York Times, 12/7/2007

LUCIAN FREUD by William Feaver (Rizzoli, 488 pages; $135). The most famous living painter in Britain now has a substantial volume to match his spectacularly ponderous subjects. With more than 400 reproductions and an essay and interviews by the British critic William Feaver, the book takes the full measure of Mr. Freud's career, from his early still-lifes to his mature self-portraits. In Mr. Feaver's wry prose, one portrait exudes "lustrous fleshiness and squiffy malevolence," another "breathes the snoring exhaustion of full-term pregnancy." In his conversations with the author, the artist reminisces about his muses (Leigh Bowery), influences (Constable, Courbet) and contemporaries (Pinter, Bacon), circling back to the maniacally intense commitment and robust "inner life" he has consistently demanded from his sitters. KAREN ROSENBERG