Wendell Freud Girl With Kitten

Lucian Freud’s life has revolved around art since the day he was born in Berlin, Germany on December 8th 1922. Born to Ernest Freud, an architect, and Lucie Brasch, who studied art history, it isn’t difficult to see why Lucian Freud ’s passion for art sparked at such an early age. Lucian Freud ’s devotion too school however was not as great. Lucian Freud often skipped classes he disliked, including his art classes, either because he disliked the teacher or he found the class to be boring. This resulted in Lucian Freud being expelled from numerous schools who grew tired of his rebellious behavior. In 1937 however, The Central School of Arts and Crafts took notice of Freud when they saw one of his sculptures, a carving of a three-legged horse
He paints these hues onto the canvas rather, like the colors themselves, dully with long lines to shape the characters hiding any brushstrokes that might have been visible. This style in which Lucian Freud paints “Girl with Kitten” seems to make the piece feel rather flat having very shallow spatial depth. Most of Lucian Freud’s brushstrokes paint these lines to draw the viewer towards the bottom center of the canvas creating a single point perspective around the kitten. The only exception being the lines Lucian Freud uses within the young ladies hair, where Lucian Freud adds texture with his short frizzy strokes giving a small tinge of movement to her hair while the rest of the piece remains relatively static. Lucian Freud doesn’t use this same technique with the kitten’s fur; instead he paints a simple pattern of stripes along the kitten’s body. Using these differences between the young girl and the kitten Lucian Freud is able to create an asymmetrical balance between the top and bottom half of the canvas. Lucian Freud creates this balance by having the kitten as the primary focus of the bottom half of the piece while the young woman’s face is the primary subject of the top half. This balance is also established in the size of
Lucian Freud also uses the same colors here boasting his use of light pastel blues, grays, beige, and browns however the colors seem less flat here and more defined. Perhaps this definition comes from Lucian Freud’s changing use of the brush, allowing the viewer to see more brush strokes than in his older works, which gives his paintings a looser less restrained