Lucian Freud

Freud's unflinching portraits—flesh rendered with almost brutal honesty, sitters exposed in prolonged sittings of months or years—make him the greatest British painter of the late 20th century. 'Benefits Supervisor Sleeping' set a living-artist record of $33.6 million in 2008. Working in his Notting Hill studio with a small circle of models, he built an oeuvre of intimate, irreplaceable intensity.