London’s art world seems convinced that it’ll implode if there isn’t a major exhibition of Lucian Freud’s works every couple of years. Following his Self Portraits show at the Royal Academy in 2019 and then New Perspectives at the National Gallery in 2022, the most recent fix comes from the National Portrait Gallery. Lucian Freud: Drawing into Painting focuses on an often-overlooked aspect of the celebrated painter’s oeuvre; his works on paper. Many artists liken drawing to thinking – you may not like everything you see when you’re allowed into their thoughts.
Canvas and paper, because of their varying absorbency and materiality, require wildly different approaches. Compared to the grand monuments of Freud’s paintings, his drawings are delicate and vulnerable, which is why he largely made them as preparatory sketches or to keep a visual diary. Certain marks and motifs would be experimented with on paper before they ended up on canvas. And while he pushed the boundaries of how to represent the human form, not every experiment produced interesting results, so to base an entire exhibition around such drawings is certainly an interesting choice.
Where the show really succeeds is in its curation, fostering a dialogue between Freud’s drawings and paintings. When they’re hung side by side – the figures in his drawings isolated from the painting – you really appreciate his keen observation of the body reflected in every determined line. You can see how the density of shading in preparatory sketches for Benefits Supervisor, his seminal portrait of muse Sue Tilley, has informed the undulating tones of her painted skin. But it often feels like these drawings rely on their paintings, the real stars of the show, for validation.
Portraits stare out at you with huge eyes that could swallow you whole.
That’s not to say his works on paper lack psychological depth. He did, after all, draw his sitters to familiarise himself with them. Many of them, especially his first wife Kitty Garman, stare out at you with huge eyes that could swallow you whole. Because oil paints take a while to dry and their form can be disturbed, Freud’s paintings are fascinated with the fragility of flesh, whereas ink and charcoal bind to paper instantly, making his drawings, particularly of his ageing mother, an ode to the immediacy of mortality. Nowhere is this more apparent than in his drawing Dead Monkey, in which the primate looks like a human peacefully sleeping, laying on its side with a hand curled next to its face.
As Lucian Freud moved away from surrealism towards an alienated realism in the ’50s, his painting and drawing equally underwent a transformation. Earlier charcoal and crayon pieces like Christian Bérard or A Girl feature clean, microscopically fine detail. These lines became frenetic and restless when he took up printmaking processes like etching to produce the ghostly shadows of his final self-portrait. The compulsion to carve lines with an etching needle into copper plates coincided with his desire to paint in thick and sculptural impasto from the ’50s until the end of his life.
Considering there’s half a wall dedicated to Freud's childhood drawings, this show is ultimately about the artistic process. But to an outside observer, that process can often appear slow and meandering. If you’re crazy for Lucian Freud then this show will surely give you a peek into his practice. For those who aren’t familiar with his work though, hold onto your £25 and wait until the next inevitable exhibition of the artist’s work. Hopefully it’ll feature mostly his paintings.
