After finishing the one thousand or so pages of this two-volume biography, it’s hard not to be impressed by the life-long dedication of Lucian Freud to the art of painting and in particular to the painting of the human form. It was the driving passion of his life, provoking, absorbing, and stimulating him for the best part of eighty years. It’s a credit to his biographer that the single-mindedness of Freud’s devotion should be what lingers when the last page of these books is turned. Not the philandering, not the gambling, not the hobnobbing with aristocrats and villains, not the rivalry with Francis Bacon; the struggle to render individual lives in paint is what persists.

Freud has mellowed by the time we meet him in volume 2, but not by much. The casual cruelty, the snobbishness, and deep self-absorption are still in evidence, but as he starts to leave middle age his sharp eye focuses more on his artistic legacy, and with that comes the unrelenting concentration on his work. Partners, children, friends, and dealers all assume a distant second place as the painting takes more and more of his attention and the works become larger, more ambitious, and more demanding.

For Freud the work was everything. Read Feaver’s biography and enjoy the anecdotes and gossip, but, if you can, have reproductions of the work nearby and study them. (I recommend especially the Phaidon edition).