Self-portrait of Lucian Freud shown

LONDON — A new self-portrait by Lucian Freud, who is widely considered Britain’s greatest living figurative artist, went on display Wednesday at London’s National Portrait Gallery.

“The Painter Surprised by a Naked Admirer” shows the 82-year-old standing in his paint-splattered studio while a naked woman crouching on the floor clutches his leg. The oil painting, measuring 54 by 42 inches, features Freud’s trademark use of muddy colors to depict worn and irregular naked human flesh.

Freud, the grandson of psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, hasn’t revealed the identity of the woman in the painting.

Freud’s sitters have ranged from friends and family to Queen Elizabeth II and supermodel Kate Moss. His near life-size painting of the naked and pregnant Moss sold at auction for $7.3 million in February.

At the same Christie’s auction, another Freud painting, “Red Haired Man on a Chair,” sold for $7.7 million, a record price for the artist at auction.

Freud has said he prefers to paint his models naked because “I can see more -- see the forms repeating right through the body and often in the head as well. One of the most exciting things is seeing through the skin, to the blood and veins and markings.”

“The Painter Surprised by a Naked Admirer” will be displayed at the National Portrait Gallery until May 8. It will go on show at Venice’s Museo Correr this summer as part of a Freud retrospective.