Lucian Freud

Verdi once said that "to copy the truth can be a good thing, but to invent the truth is better, much better." Freud didn't invent, nor did he do allegory; he painted the here and now. He thought of himself as a biologist --- just as he thought of his grandfather Sigmund as an eminent zoölogist, rather than a psychoanalyst.

He greatly admired Chardin's The Young Schoolmistress --- which most would see as one of the tenderest (and most beautifully sculpted) images of human interaction; Freud liked it mainly because the schoolmistress had the best-painted ear in the history of art.

--- From "Heart-Squasher," a review by Julian Barnes
in The London Review of Books, 5 December 2013.
The books reviewed are Man with a Blue Scarf
by Martin Gayford and
Breakfast with Lucian
by Geordie Grieg.