Lucian Freud is universally acclaimed as Britain’s most famous and expensive living artist.

A Freud painting when it goes on the market is now guaranteed a seven figure reserve price and in May, the portrait “Benefits Supervisor Sleeping” sold to Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich for $33 million, setting a new world record for a living artist !

However, the 85-year-old artist was recently informed that one of his subjects, Bernard Breslauer, a famous New York antiques book dealer – who once bought a Gutenberg Bible – had wrecked his portrait.

The destruction of the multimillion dollar painting by Breslauer, who died at the age of 86 in 2004, was discovered by Professor Catherine Lampert, who has been searching for works painted by Freud between 1940 and 1958 for a retrospective exhibition to be held at the Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert gallery in St James’s next month.

“Lucian has a vivid mental picture of the Breslauer painting so, partly at his suggestion, I set about trying to find it. It is a mystery exactly when the picture was destroyed, but it hasn’t been seen for many years.” Prof Lampert said.

Mr Breslauer, apparently, objected to the way Freud had painted his distinctive double chin.

“Freud knew Bernard didn’t like the picture at the time because he hadn’t found it very flattering” but he is very “disappointed and frustrated, as any artist would be,”.

“He doesn’t mind his work going hand to hand and being sold. But like any artist, he wants his pictures to be kept and not destroyed.”