Rarely seen painting goes on display at Royal Academy's Lucian Freud exhibition

This is one of several rarely seen works by Lucian Freud going on show in a major exhibition this week.

The 1947 painting, Still Life with Green Lemon, has been in a private collection and has not been seen in public since 1974.

More than 50 works are featured in the Royal Academy show including three self-portraits not seen together since they were painted in 1963.

Freud, who died in 2011, is regarded as one of the great painters of the last century and his work can sell for millions of pounds.

Only last year, a nude portrait he painted in 2003 sold for £22.5 million at Sotheby’s.

In 2015, his 1994 work Benefits Supervisor Resting went for £35.6 million at Christie’s in New York.

Lucian Freud: The Self-Portraits opens on Sunday (October 27) and runs until January 26.