London's National Portrait Gallery is, until 27 May, hosting a magnificent show documenting seven decades of Lucian Freud's portraiture. It's a treat. Visitors are taken on a tour of Freud's relationships and the development of his phenomenal talent in 130 works, some of which have never been shown before.
Among the most interesting paintings are Freud's self-portraits, demonstrating both his changing technique and relationship with himself as he aged.
Oneself As a Mirror
Freud painted himself a number of times over the years, despite finding self-portraits challenging.
"Painting myself is more difficult than painting people, I've found. The psychological element is more difficult. Increasingly so."
He never imbued his work with any symbolism, or tried to make it surreal; the titles of his portraits (the pictures of himself are mostly just called Self-Portrait) are sufficient to tell us that he just painted what he saw. He painted himself from a mirror, using one particular mirror for more than 30 years, which he said allowed him to see himself from different angles.
Beginning
Outside the entrance to the main exhibition space in the NPG is a series of etchings (cleverly displayed to attract attention from visitors who haven't yet made up their minds whether to pay to see the exhibition proper...) that includes one Freud self-portrait. It's darker than the pictures that surround it, as if he's tried to chisel himself out of it. It's a realistic portrait, and therefore at odds with the earliest one in the exhibition.
He painted Man With Feather in 1943, when he was 20. The painting is redolent of some of Henri Matisse's work - highly stylised, with unrealistic shape and colouring. People have tried to work out the symbolism of the figures in the windows behind him, the shapes on the ground and the feather, but Freud was always unforthcoming. He said the feather was definitely real, rather than symbolic - a gift from a lover.
Transition
His double portrait Hotel Bedroom (1954) shows Freud and his second wife, Caroline Blackwood. The painting is haunting - neither party looks happy, and the impression given is one of a couple who are not really together. They had divorced by 1957 and apparently Caroline hated the painting, complaining that Freud had made her look years older than she was - 22 at the time.
Hotel Bedroom is painted in Freud's early style - unrealistic and a little flat - though it marked a dramatic transition between that and the fleshy, tactile, textured work we have come to expect from him.
It was the last portrait he painted whilst sitting down.
During the 1950s Freud began to stand up to paint, and he swapped his fine brushes for hogshair. Both changes enabled him to pursue a more energetic, vigorous style that is reflected in the rest of the exhibition.
The 1960s
There are five self-portraits from the 1960s on display. One, Man's Head (Self-Portrait) is a gorgeous, warm, thoughtful piece in browns, reds and oranges. Self-Portrait is more abstract - the nose is distorted and the eyes are hidden.
In Interior With Hand Mirror, Freud paints himself into the background; similarly, he is relegated to a minor player in Interior With Plant, Reflection Listening, with a huge green houseplant taking up the foreground.
He used a mirror on the floor to paint Reflection With Two Children. The angle gives the piece an odd viewpoint, and the children, despite being his children, are too small in comparison and too far away from him to look as though they are supposed to be in the same painting.
We can only assume, if he never employed symbolism, that this is how he saw himself those particular days.
The Later Years
Freud became harder on himself as he got older. He never painted to flatter, and the two portraits on display from this era put him under intense scrutiny. The work from 1981-2 is a famous picture of Freud looking sideways at himself, apparently naked, and looking suspicious. The other is reflective; he's looking elsewhere in this one. His face is craggy and his mottled flesh is made up of all the colours that are in skin if we look hard enough - green, orange, brown, white, yellow...
Freud used colour brilliantly, showing every muscle and contour of a figure with only a few heavy brushstrokes.
He is gentler with himself in the final self-portrait on show, done in 2002. He looks like an old man. His face looks tired, and the colours he chose to use mean his image almost fades into the background.
This could be a poignant painting, but it doesn't end the exhibition. Visitors have nine more years of Freud to enjoy after this, including portraits of the historian Martin Gayford, the artist David Hockney and Freud's long-time assistant David Dawson. The poignant painting is Portrait of the Hound, of Dawson and his dog Eli - left unfinished on the easel when Freud died in 2011.
A Footnote
When I was there, a few people asked where Freud's 2001 painting of Queen Elizabeth II is, and were disappointed when told that it's in Cardiff as part of a touring exhibition commemorating the Queen's Diamond Jubilee. The exhibition returns to the National Portrait Gallery in May.
Jennie Gillions - Jennie Gillions has a History and Archaeology degree. She is a published writer with particular interests in art, history and mental ...
