Lucian Freud's retrospective at Tate Britain in 2002 was the culmination of a series of acclaimed exhibitions that have marked the painter's career, which spans more than fifty years. He is the greatest figurative painter of our time and is described by the late Bruce Bernard as 'one of the great portrait painters of all time - of all people of all ages and both sexes, clothed and unclothed'. Now in his eightieth year his output has in no way diminished. Lucian Freud is the definitive book on the painter's work and was first published in 1996, in a large edition, which is now much sought after. This revised version in a smaller format makes this great body of work available to a wide readership and ranges from his childhood drawings in the late twenties to his late work at the end of the nineties. The directness of Freud's work unnerves as well as engages the viewer. His gaze is unsparing. 'Freud carried the experience so far that we sometimes wonder if we have any right to be there', wrote John Russell. In admiration of his technical brilliance and sensitive to the interior world he was creating, Herbert Read called him 'the Ingres of existentialism'. But Freud himself declared, 'as far as I am concerned the paint is the person. I want it to work for me just as the flesh does'.