Another Freud by Freud

These are the remarkable works from Lucian Freud that reveal a lifetime of artistic development and physical transformation.

Now at the height of his powers, Freud, 81, has been hailed as Britain's finest living painter.

Today the Evening Standard reveals his latest self-portrait, which has been two years in the making. It is, at least as of now, the culmination of an extraordinary artistic career peppered with passionate love affairs.

Whoever his subject - and recently he painted the Queen - Freud refuses to flatter. The reclusive artist once said: "I paint people, not because of what they are like, not exactly in spite of what they are like, but how they happen to be."

That uncompromising vision is also turned on himself in his latest work, completed only last week. It shows every wrinkle and hollow of his eight decades.

His friend William Feaver said of the new canvas: "It is very small, a very tight close-up. To my mind it has a completely different spirit from the painting shown in the Tate in 2002. He has been doing selfportraits since 1939, which is an amazing span equalled only, I think, by Picasso."

Freud, born in 1922, painted one of his first self-portraits when he was 17, around the period he was studying at the Central School Of Art in London and also at Cedric Morris's school in Dedham, Norfolk.

His early style developed as Freud himself grew, until his 1949 portrait of the artist as a young man, aged 27. A year later he began painting standing up, which radically changed his style - according to the Tate it infused his work with "a more athletic, energetic feel".

By the Eighties Freud was working in the unflinching realistic style now associated with his work. His 1985 piece, entitled Ref lection (self-portrait) was painted when he was 63.

Now, nearly two decades on, Freud has completed the latest instalment of this visual chronicle of his life.

He said: "The subject matter is autobiographical. It's all to do with hope and memory and sensuality and involvement, really."

Freud's new self-portrait goes on show from Wednesday at the Wallace Collection, part of an exhibition of his latest work, which runs until 18 April.

For more details, contact 020 7563 9500 or visit www.wallacecollection.org.