Artist Lucian Freud breaks another record with his will

Even though British painter Lucian Freud died at the age of 88 in 2011, he just can’t stop setting records.

In what’s said to be the largest amount ever bequeathed by a British artist, Freud left 96 million pounds (approximately $156 million) in his will.

Freud last landed in the record books for his lush nude painting “Benefits Supervisor Sleeping” (1995), which fetched $33 million at auction in 2008, the largest sum ever received for a work by a living artist.

Freud left 2.5 million pounds and a house to his long-term assistant David Dawson, who is pictured with Freud’s whippet Eli in his 2011 piece “Portrait of the Hound,” as reported by London’s Mail on Sunday. The remainder was divided between his lawyer and one of his daughters, Rose Pearce, who were both named as trustees in Freud’s will and are instructed to dispose of the artist’s possessions “in line with wishes expressed during the artist’s life.”

The grandson of psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, Lucian Freud was known for unsparing yet beautifully rendered depictions of the human body, including nudes of Kate Moss (which sold for more than $7 million) and his mother and daughter.

Times Art Critic Christopher Knight was mixed on the retrospective “Lucian Freud,” which was exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art in 2003, writing that the works on display “are visual essays on the fascination and inevitable failure of the flesh. Freud is typically described as a portraitist and a painter of nudes, but Ecce homo is what he’s up to. Behold the man -- and woman -- his pictures say, again and again.”

ALSO:

Lucian Freud dies at 88

Remembering artist Lucian Freud

Art review: Behold the man’s work: Lucian Freud at MOCA