A Dictionary of

Twentieth-Century Art

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Memorial in Washington. He also made astanding figure of Lincoln for the town of Lin-coln, Nebraska (1912). More typical of hiswork, however, are allegorical figures ofwomen (Alma Mater, Columbia University,New York, 1903). 'Chesterwood', French'shome and studio near Stockbridge, Massa-chussetts, has been preserved as a memorialto him.

French, Leonard (1928- ). Australian painter,active mainly in his native Melbourne. He wasapprenticed to a signwriter, which encour-aged him to think as a muralist, and studiedat night at the Melbourne Technical College,1944-7. His first commission was for two fres-cos in the Congregational Church, Brunswick(the district of Melbourne in which he wasborn)—To the War Dead and One World (1948),executed in the manner of *Orozco. In 1949 heworked his passage to England and met Alan*Davie in London. He visited Ireland and stud-ied the heavy, intertwined shapes of Celticart, but the work of *Gromaire and *Permeke,and later that of *Delaunay and *Leger, exer-cised a more direct influence on the paint-ings he produced after his return toMelbourne in 1952. His work at this time wasgeometrical and flat, taut in line and stridentin colour, and he began to show a preferencefor epic themes from literature (notably theIliad and the Odyssey). Although his picturesoften involved literary or religious imagery,his style became semi-abstract and intuitivelyevolved: 'I don't really know what I am goingto paint; it has to grow up in the process of onecolour on top of another.' His mature styleemerged in the early 1960s in a series of paint-ings inspired by reading Evelyn Waugh's bio-graphy of the 16th-century Jesuit martyrEdmund Campion, which had been lent tohim by the Catholic poet Vincent Buckley, aclose friend. These paintings best expressFrench's ideal of the heroic, in which the spir-itual will battles with and yet is in a sense con-tained by the mechanical, the seasonal, andthe cyclical. In 1962-3 French lived for a timein Greece. On returning to Melbourne he wascommissioned to design a stained-glass ceil-ing for the Great Hall of the new National ArtGallery of Victoria. French has also producedetchings and lithographs related to thethemes of his paintings.

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C^Freud, Lucian (1922- y German-born Britishpainter and draugnTsrnan. He was born in

Berlin, son of an architect, Ernst Freud, andgrandson of Sigmund Freud. In 1932 hesettled in England with his parents, and heacquired British nationality in 1939. His earl-iest love was drawing and he began to workfull-time as an artist after being invalided outof the Merchant Navy in 1942 (his formaltraining was brief but included an importantperiod in 1939 studying with Cedric *Morris,who encouraged his pupils to let feelings pre-vail over objective observation). From 1948 to1958 he taught at the *Slade School. He firstexhibited his work in 1944 and first made amajor public impression in 1951 when hisInterior at Paddington (Walker Art Gallery,Liverpool) won a prize at the *Festival ofBritain; it shows the sharply focused detail,pallid colouring, and obsessive, slightlybizarre atmosphere characteristic of his workat this time. Because of the meticulous finishof such paintings, Freud has sometimes beendescribed as a 'Realist' (or rather absurdly as a*Superrealist), but the subjectivity and inten-sity of his work has always set him apart fromthe sober tradition characteristic of mostBritish figurative art since the Second WorldWar. From the late 1950s he painted withmuch broader handling and richer colouring,without losing any of his intensity of vision.His work includes still-lifes, interiors, andurban scenes, but his specialities are portraitsand nudes, often observed injrresting close-up,-with the fleshTpainting given an ̂ extra-ordinary quality of palpability (The Painter'sMother, Tate Gallery, London, 1982). He prefersto paint people he knows well, one of hisfavourite recent subjects being the Australian*Performance artist Leigh Bowery (1961-94),who was a friend from the mid-1980s: 'If youdon't know them, it can only be like a travelbook.'

Freud's work has been shown in numerousoneman and group shows and he has steadilybuilt up a formidable reputation as one of themost powerful contemporary figure painters.In 1993 Peter *Blake wrote that since thedeath of Francis *Bacon the previous year,Freud was 'certainly the best living Britishpainter', and by this time he was also well-known abroad (a major retrospective exhib-ition of his work in 1987-8 was seen in Parisand Washington as well as London). His famehas been won in spite of an aversion to self-publicity. Sir John *Rothenstein writes of him:'Freud holds himself aloof not only from offi-cial life but also from conventional social life