The Do Dig Doggy

A morning of tasks related to the kitchen project, which is due to start in a few weeks time. Whilst visiting a business nearby, I had to photograph this pet shop, for the name as much as anything else. Then a Zoom meeting and only then an eight mile walk. Next, gin and tonic. But first...

Lucian Freud was one of the finest 20th century figurative painters.  The son of Sigmund Freud, Lucian was born in Berlin but fled Nazism with his family and settled in Britain.  Until the mid-1950s, Freud used a crisp, tightly focussed style, in works such as Girl with Beret (1951.) He also painted scenes of London, in a very unsentimental style on works such as Wasteground with Houses, Paddington (1972.)

From the 1960s he concentrated on paintings of nudes in a distinctive, objective, some would say "coarse" style. He used stiff, hogs' hair brushes and a bold, heavy paint which enabled him to build-up flesh tones. To my mind, his masterpiece is Benefits Supervisor Sleeping (1995) depicting his friend Sue Tilley, who worked as a supervisor at a Benefits Office, lying naked on a couch.