The Butcher's Daughter 2000

Lucian Freud painted *The Butcher’s Daughter* with oil on canvas, and the paint handling is so direct! You can practically see him wrestling with the form as he builds it up. The texture is really something – thick impasto in places, especially on the face and torso, where it feels like he’s really digging into the subject. The color palette is earthy, almost fleshy, with these muted pinks, browns, and creams that give the figure a real sense of weight and presence. Look at the way he’s rendered the hands, each finger a little monument of paint. There's something so honest about the way he depicts the human body, without any attempt to idealize or prettify it. I’m reminded of how Alice Neel also captured her sitters with such unflinching honesty and psychological insight. And like Neel, Freud invites us to see the beauty and complexity in the everyday, the imperfect, and the real.