Girl with a Kitten
(Picture: AFP via Getty Images)How do you find a new angle on an artist as familiar as Lucian Freud? He’s been the subject of endless shows, not least at Tate Liverpool last year and the Royal Academy in 2019, the same year that a long-awaited biography was published. Can we ever really see him in a new light? What more is there to say?
Quite a lot, it turns out. The new perspectives the National Gallery promises in its title are an attempt to unshackle him from what have become orthodox viewpoints, to wrestle him free from established legend. You know the one: the cruel, maverick genius with the famous name and the unflinching eye.
