LUCIAN FREUD and Francis Bacon, the two giants of post-war
British painting, met in 1945. Bacon was 36, Mr Freud not even
23. Mr Freud had heard about the mysterious and distinctive
Irish-born artist from Graham Sutherland. Shortly afterwards,
Sutherland invited them both to spend the weekend at his English
country house, and they met at the railway station on the way
there. An intense bond quickly developed. “Once I met him I saw
him a lot,” Mr Freud would recall later.  Close friends, it was
inevitable that sooner or later each would begin to appear in
the other's paintings. Mr Freud was called to the studio for his
first portrait by Bacon in 1951. This was unusual, as Bacon
usually preferred working from secondary media, such as
photographs.   Mr Freud quickly discovered why. When he returned
to the studio after his first sitting, he found that in his
absence the portrait had metamorphosed into something quite
different; it now looked very much like the snapshot of the
Prague-born early 20th-century writer