It's great news that a Lucian Freud portrait has been given to
the Tate. That adds another work by this extraordinary artist to
Britain's public collections. But will we ever produce another
artist like Lucian Freud? Freud came to Britain in 1933, his
11th year. What makes a great artist – nature or nurture? Freud
had some impressive genes, being Sigmund Freud's grandson. You
could even argue that he and Sigmund shared the same profound
preoccupation with the body and sex and our fleshy earthbound
natures. Lucian Freud spent his early childhood in Berlin and
there is a German cultural heritage visible in his work: his
paintings can easily be exhibited next to those of an artist
such as Otto Dix. But it was in Britain that he trained. Freud's
most important art education was at the East Anglian School of
Painting and Drawing run by the artist Cedric Morris. He also
spent time at London colleges but it seems to have been in East
Anglia that this juvenile delinquent started to apply himself.
Morris was a self-ta