Portraits were central to the work of Lucian Freud (1922-2011). Working only from life, the artists claimed, "I could never put anything into a picture that wasn't actually there in front of me." This major retrospective catalogue surveys Freud's portraits across the seven decades of his career. Featuring the finest portraits from public and private collections around the world, the book explores the stylistic development and remarkable technical...

The development of painting in London from the Second World War to the 1970s has never before been told before as a single narrative. R. B. Kitaj's proposal, made in 1976, that there was a 'substantial School of London' was essentially correct but it caused confusion because it implied that there was a movement or stylistic group at work, when in reality no one style could cover the likes of Francis Bacon and also Bridget Riley.

"Following his 'obsessive, intricate, intimate, and brilliant' (Washington Post) work in Posthumous Keats and The Immortal Evening, renowned poet Stanley Plumly further explores immortality in art through the work of two impressive landscape artists: John Constable and J.M.W. Turner. How is it that this disparate pair will come to be regarded as Britain's supreme landscape painters, precursors to Impressionism and Modernism? How did each painter's...