{"id":325847,"date":"2026-03-12T11:21:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-12T11:21:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/325847\/"},"modified":"2026-03-12T11:21:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T11:21:09","slug":"lucian-freud-mastered-the-art-of-lostness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/325847\/","title":{"rendered":"Lucian Freud Mastered the Art of Lostness"},"content":{"rendered":"

Art Review<\/a><\/p>\n

As a National Portrait Gallery exhibition proves, he was especially good at depicting people painfully adrift from themselves. <\/p>\n


\n \"Michael
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

\"Lucian
\n Lucian Freud, “Girl\u00a0in Bed” (1952), oil on canvas\u00a0(\u00a9 The Lucian Freud Archive. All Rights Reserved 2026 \/ Bridgeman Images. Photo \u00a9 National Portrait Gallery, London. Lent by a private collection, courtesy of Ordovas)<\/p>\n

LONDON \u2014 Death can be such a miserable nose-dive for any artist. Lucian Freud is deep into the 15th year of his posthumous life as a celebrated figurative painter. Where do the custodians of his reputation take him from here?\u00a0<\/p>\n

I am asking myself this question in London, where Lucian stalked abroad in his studio in the city\u2019s W9 area, in his clumpy old boots, for so long, brushes all a-bristle. And, more particularly this morning, in the National Portrait Gallery, an institution that backs up against the National Gallery as if the two were a brace of vain aristocratic duelists. This place has shown Freud off to great effect, more than once within relatively recent memory. Does anyone want to hear the small, sweet tune played over again, this time a little more faintly?<\/p>\n

\"\"Lucian Freud, “Bella in her Pluto T-Shirt” (1995), etching (\u00a9 The Lucian Freud Archive. All Rights Reserved [2026] \/ Bridgeman Images. Collection National Portrait Gallery)<\/p>\n

What\u2019s the big idea behind Drawing into Painting<\/a>, a new show of about 170 of Freud\u2019s pieces, then? What about digging deep into the archives, and pestering private collectors for their Lucianic riches? That is precisely what has happened. And the overarching theme? How drawing fed into his painting from first to last, and how print-making played a crucial role, too. We see some works that we already know far too well, but not that many, and several others that may pleasantly surprise us, some adjuncts, others off-cuts, and a few real gems.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s think about what we knew relatively little about \u2014 the stuff of Lucian’s childhood. The son of an architect, grandson of Sigmund, he was fleeted away from Germany in 1933 at the age of 11 like many Jewish children. Frank Auerbach and other artists had similar experiences.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The earliest drawings show off his passion for steamboats. There are also images of a birdhouse and flowers in a vase, all meticulously rendered. His 1940s portraits often possess a cold, forensic ferocity. A pen and ink on torn paper from 1941 called \u201cThe Village Boys\u201d is particularly nasty. Several unruly kids appear to be scrapping on the ground in a rolled-up ball of rudeness and no-holds-barred pugnacity. Lucian seems to have relished the sight \u2014 quoted in the captions, he called them \u201cweedy, nasty, but strange.\u201d He\u2019s very good at painting lostness, people painfully adrift from themselves.<\/p>\n

\"\"Lucian Freud, “David Hockney” (2002), oil on canvas (\u00a9 The Lucian Freud Archive. All Rights Reserved 2026 \/ Bridgeman Images,\u00a0Lent by a private collection)<\/p>\n

But what about the man himself? He often treated women with contempt, and his behavior toward his own children could be questionable. Does any of that matter now? Should we care more than the experts seem to?<\/p>\n

So many lovers and wives and ex-wives and children are shown off to good or ill effect in this show that it\u2019s almost yawn-worthy, but some works do jump out at us. There is much brutality in the lumpish mottling of his wife Suzy Boyt\u2019s beaten about nose in a painting improbably entitled \u201cWoman Smiling.\u201d Did she hate this picture as much as England\u2019s queen must have hated her grim portrait, with her climbing jug-handles for hair? It was all grist to Freud\u2019s mill. All that sounds ferociously, relentlessly studied, and icily technical. David Hockney was amazed that it took Freud 120 hours of scrutiny to capture him just so in 2002.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Freud never spares himself in his portraits either. If anything, he seems to be trying to discover just how repellently unknowable he can prove himself to be. Very seems to be the answer.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Lucian Freud, “Portrait of a Young Man” (1944), black\u00a0crayon\u00a0and chalk on paper (\u00a9 The Lucian Freud Archive. All Rights Reserved 2026 \/ Bridgeman Images,\u00a0Lent by a private collection)<\/p>\n

Lucian Freud:\u00a0 Drawing into Painting<\/a> continues at the National Portrait Gallery (St. Martin’s Place, London, England) through May 4. The exhibition was curated by\u00a0Sarah Howgate with David Dawson.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Art Review As a National Portrait Gallery exhibition proves, he was especially good at depicting people painfully adrift…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":325848,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[442,498,499,500,501,156,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-325847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=325847"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325847\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/325848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=325847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=325847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=325847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}