A quirky, fascinating, and satisfying book by a British art critic about his 7 months of sitting motionless in Freud’s studio while the artist studied him, applied paint, and made changes in his portrait (while the sitter was, of course,  wearing a blue scarf).  What emerges is a detailed and enthralling ‘portrait’ of the artistic process, especially the particular foibles, quirks, and more importantly philosophy of one of Britain’s greatest 20^th C artists.  Personal details of Freud, as well as Francis Bacon and others emerge, but it is the artistic process that is the centerpiece of this book.  Freud, the grandson of Sigmund Freud via his father, Ernst, was born in Germany in 1922 to Jewish parents and left in 1933 for England where he became a citizen.  His emphasis on portrait painting during the heyday of abstract expressionism marked him for the social (he had 14 children out of 2 divorced ending marriages and many affairs) and artistic maverick that was his persona.  He emphasized emotional honesty and focused on ‘the flesh’.  He said “Painters are attracted to light in the way that sailors are to weather or carpenters to wood.  It is what they work with”.  His work with paint was distinctive giving a feeling of weight, texture, and irreducible uniqueness to all that he saw with his fastidious gaze.  Freud died in 2011 and Gayford continues to write, most recently a book about Van Gogh and Gauguin in Arles.