The book brings together a selection of Lucian Freud's most direct and uncompromising portraits, each painting examining the body with almost scientific precision. With an expression marked by thick layers of paint and intense presence, Freud recorded not only the surface of the skin – spots, swellings, folds – but also what lies beneath: emotion, transience and psychological depth.

The subjects range from royalty and supermodels to anonymous civil servants, all depicted with the same unsentimental gaze. Although Freud dismissed comparisons with his grandfather Sigmund Freud, there is a clear parallel between portrait painting and the psychoanalytic sitting – both search for what is not immediately visible.