Existential boobs and bored dogs – this is what it takes to be Lucian Freud.

Freud began his foray into crazily scrutinized portraits with a series of drawings of his first wife (of many, rest assured), Kitty Garmen aka the 1948 model. Daughter of sculptor Jacob Epstein, she was the wide-eyed, frizzy-haired subject of Lucian’s early works, and in 1950 she flashed her husband and the rest of the world for this particular painting. And it's one of the most depressing nip slips you’ll ever see in art history. But anyhoo…this final piece from the Kitty series was the first work of Freud’s purchased by the Tate Gallery in 1952 (once more of many, rest assured).

This somber and submissive portrait echoes the tension in Kitty and Lucian’s marriage. Lucian, a womanizing but endearing chap, loved his wife but was also mad dominating. His fancy friend, the Duke of Somerset, tells a story in the posthumous documentary, Lucian Freud: Painted Life, about how Kitty would slave away in the kitchen making stuff she thought Lucian would like. And then, after laying out his dinner for him, she would have to go sit down and face the wall while he ate his food. Dinner with the Freuds’ must have been ridiculously awkward…or could this just be a glimpse into Lucian’s macho world of foreplay?