Lucian Freud

Catherine Lampert, 1986

Frank Auerbach: frightened of heights, dogs, driving, swimming — but finding courage through painting

6 June 2015 9:00 am

With a career of more than 60 years so far, Frank Auerbach is undoubtedly one of the big beasts of…

Is Julian Barnes right to think Lucian Freud will survive? Jonathan Meades thinks not

30 May 2015 9:00 am

The subject of the least characteristic essay in this engrossing collection of meditations on painters, painters’ lives, painting and reactions…

Lankily elegant and exquisitely dressed: Peter Watson (right) with Oliver Messel

The Mad Boy, Peter Watson, Cecil Beaton and the limo — by Sofka Zinovieff

23 May 2015 9:00 am

It would not have surprised their friends in the 1930s when Peter Watson had a fling with my grandfather, Robert…

‘Group with Parasols’, c.1904, by John Singer Sargent

Sargent, National Portrait Gallery, review: he was so good he should have been better

21 February 2015 9:00 am

The artist Malcolm Morley once fantasised about a magazine that would be devoted to the practice of painting just as…

‘The Life Room’, 1977–80, by John Wonnacott

The death of the life class

6 December 2014 9:00 am

‘Love of the human form’, writes the painter John Lessore, ‘must be the origin of that peculiar concept, the Life…

The Rose (IV), by Cy Twombly

The Duke of Wellington also invades Christmas art books

22 November 2014 9:00 am

Art books fall naturally into various categories, of which the most common is probably the monograph. Judith Zilczer’s A Way…

Left: The Apostle Simon, 1661. Right: Portrait of a Lady with an Ostrich-Feather Fan, 1658–60

Rembrandt at the National Gallery: the greatest show on earth

25 October 2014 9:00 am

Martin Gayford sees Rembrandt’s late works at the National Gallery – is this the greatest show on earth?

Who’s in, who’s out: George Bernard O’Neill’s ‘Public Opinion’ depicts a private view of the annual exhibition at the Royal Academy

The age of the starving artist

26 July 2014 9:00 am

Philip Hensher on the precarious fortunes of even the most gifted 19th-century artists

Taki: our leaders are weak and powerless in the face of religious fanatics

14 December 2013 9:00 am

This Christmas our thoughts need to be with our fellow Christians who are being threatened in the Bible lands. No…

'Squiggle, squiggle, ooh, good...' Tate St Ives shows how sexy the octopus can be

23 November 2013 9:00 am

One of the more exotic attractions at the 1939–40 World’s Fair in New York was Salvador Dalí’s ‘Dream of Venus…

Lucian Freud in his bedroom in Notting Hill, May 2011

Breakfast with Lucian, by Geordie Greig - review

12 October 2013 9:00 am

According to the medical historian Professor Sonu Shamdasani, Sigmund Freud was not the best, nor actually the most interesting, psychoanalyst…