This exhibition is entitled Lucian Freud: Drawing into Painting, and it focuses for a change on the great man’s art on paper as well as canvas, including his etchings. Not so long ago, there was a fine exhibition of the portraits at the National Gallery. This show, by contrast, aims to show the relationship between his drawings and his paintings – and the gallery has a huge archive of his sketchbooks. Many of the drawings here are not intended as finished work, but are casual pieces or more or less thinking aloud on paper. And let me say right off that it was as a portrait painter that Freud showed his greatness. By comparison with the lovely lines of the early David Hockney, say, Freud was a far less impressive draughtsman.
But that generalisation needs to be qualified. He did a study in crayon and chalk in 1944 of a sleeping or deceased little rabbit on a wicker chair, done with such consistent, attentive detail, the effect is moving. And then there are the penetrating drawings of his mother, which are so different from the rest. In fact, his depictions of his mother in any medium (his favourite subject other than himself) are wonderful things; there are a couple of drawings of her from 1983 and 1984 on paper, charcoal with crayon or pastel, which show the son’s intimate knowledge of the mother. These are merciless representations of age – the dour lines from the mouth, the jowls – but they show the indomitable gaze of a doughty and intelligent woman. By contrast the etching of her made just before them is hideous. One fragment of a drawing from 1972, showing just the left eye and brows and a wisp of hair, demonstrates that he worked at detailed level from the start, beginning at the centre of the picture.
