ALASTAIR SMART
Lucian Freud: New Perspectives
The National Gallery, London
Until January 22 ★★★★★
Sitting for a portrait by Lucian Freud was no picnic. For a picture called The Brigadier (2003-4), Andrew Parker Bowles had to visit the painter’s studio for four hours, three times a week, over a period of 18 months. An incredulous Prince Philip once asked him: ‘What on earth do you do that for?’
It’s hard to argue with the results of Freud’s sittings, though – certainly on the evidence of a major new exhibition at The National Gallery. It features paintings from every decade of his career (the 1940s to the 2010s), ushering visitors from the faux-naive style of Freud’s early years through to his huge late canvases, where the paint is so thick it almost bops you in the face.
The exhibition is subtitled New Perspectives. However, one struggles to see what sets it apart from any previous Freud show. This was an artist with an infamously forensic eye, who described his sitters (many of them friends and family) as ‘zoological’ specimens. Almost always, their gazes are averted: these figures are looked at, but don’t look back.
In the post-#MeToo era, the pictures of young naked females are more contentious than ever. It’s worth noting, though, that Freud was just as pitiless when it came to depicting himself.
In Painter Working,
Reflection (1993), the 71-yearold is naked but for a pair of boots on his feet, a palette in one hand and a palette knife in another. His hair is grey, his face lined, his flesh saggy – and he wears a look of resignation, as if facing up to his own mortality.
This show is being held to mark the centenary of Freud’s birth. It couldn’t exactly be called celebratory, but is still well worth a visit.