Lucian Freud: A Great Realist Painter

Girl with a White Dog, 1950-51
Freud's great subject was the human figure, meticulously inspected and offered without sentiment, though not without respect for the human predicament. He painted his friends, family and lovers, usually requiring multiple lengthy sittings. In many pictures he also combined people with dogs, two different but related kinds of awareness. The glum, apprehensive woman here is his first wife, Kitty. You can tell by looking that their marriage wasn't going well. They divorced in 1953.

• Robert Hughes on Modern British Art at the Royal Academy