Lucian Freud's Daughter: He Was Like Sigmund

Lucian Freud's daughter has compared the artist to his grandfather, the psychoanalyst Sigmund, as a new exhibition of the painter's work opens.

Lucian Freud Portraits features more than 100 paintings by the British artist completed over 70 years, many of them nude studies of Freud's friends and family.

His daughter, Jane McAdam Freud, who is also an artist, described her father as an "enigma".

She told Sky News he tapped into the public's consciousness like his grandfather, the founder of psychoanalysis.

She said: "He's already gone into the consciousness, in a way similar way to Sigmund who is certainly in everybody's consciousness, his ideas.

"I think my father has done the same thing through a different means.

"He has taken the analytical enquiry through the medium he knows and loves and penetrated the consciousness of all of us, which is what Sigmund Freud did with psychoanalysis."

McAdam Freud said he was not a family man as he "put his art first" but when they reconnected later in life discovered they had "mutual admiration" for each other.

The sculptor said: "It was wonderful when we reunited.

"We were impressed by each other, amazingly. I was impressed by him and he made it quite plain that he didn't want to take my time up and that my work would become public because it was good.

"He said some amazing things... He was very encouraging, without being pushy".

The exhibition includes portraits of family members, particularly his mother Lucie, as well as artists such as Frank Auerbach, Francis Bacon, Michael Andrews, John Minton and David Hockney, and the performance artist Leigh Bowery.

Other key pieces on display include Girl With A White Dog, Naked Girl Asleep and Reflection (self portrait), as well as his life-size canvases of the human body.

Freud died in July last year aged 88.

The exhibition runs until May 27 at the National Portrait Gallery, London.

McAdam Freud's own show is currently on at the Freud Museum, London, until March 4.