Some Reflections on Lucian Freud: The Hype and the Reality

By Ally Crossland

Nowadays, the British public are bombarded with the Lucian Freud image. His portraits seem to be everywhere, making a big splash in the exhibition world as well as the auction houses. The National Portrait Gallery’s blockbuster Lucian Freud Portraits has certainly drawn in the crowds. In fact it has been the galleries most successful show ever, receiving over 175,000 visitors through its doors. Its popularity has no doubt been helped by a visit from the ever glamorous and on trend Duchess of Cambridge. Freud has long been seen as the saviour of British Art, one of the most revolutionary artists for generations. Some claim the hype of the Lucian Freud brand has outshone the brilliance of his raw and uncompromising talent. Others feel, as one online sources comments, that Freud was an ‘ugly painter, of ugly people’.

Yet, in my humble opinion, no better accomplished and talented artist could have been given the honour of almost the entire lower floor of the National Portrait Gallery, in which to hang perhaps the most important retrospectives of the last few years. Possibly not since the Francis Bacon exhibition at the Tate in 2008 has such an important retrospective focused on the work of one British artist working in the twenty-first century.

Freud's early portrait of his first wife Kitty

From the exquisitely detailed portraits of his youth, with electrically charged eyes and doleful expressions, Freud showed prolific talent. As an artist his penetrative gaze allowed him to access the inner qualities of the sitter. He revealed the secrets about them that they would rather keep hidden, laid bare and uncompromised on the canvas.

In Freud’s later portraits he did away with any pretence of formality, stripping the sitter to the bare bones and flesh that make up what it is to be human. Whether clothed or nude, Freud’s sitters are depicted in the most brutal yet sensitive way. Contorted into uncomfortable positions, their faces un-idealised, mournful and pensive, Freud’s sitters reflect real people and emotions that can be seen and felt in today’s world.

Life model Sue Tilley and 'Benefits Supervisor Sleeping'

Two of Freud's last portraits, with 'Portrait with Hound' 2011 on the right

The bodies in Freud’s portraits become swathes of raw pigment forced onto the canvas. Faces are contorted by age or an inner complexity that will never be fully realised by the spectator. What Freud achieves is a realness that other portraitists would never dare to address. He claims the subject for himself and enters into a relationship with the sitter, part trust and part animal attraction. His later works, even the painting Portrait with Hound, painted up until Freud’s death in 2011, shares this same brutal honestly. Yet it is also beautifully poignant. This unfinished portrait finishes mid-sentence, leaving the spectator to fill in the blanks. In a sense this is quite apart from the rest of the exhibition, which successfully depicts all the different stages of Freud’s life through his paintings. The paintings, which so define Freud’s life, speak for themselves, and in my opinion find a voice within the walls of the National Portrait Gallery. They may be ‘ugly’, but in the same breath they are truly exquisite reflections of the very real people that made up Freud’s world.

Lucian Freud Portraits runs at the National Portrait Gallery until the 27th May 2012.Admission £14. Concessions £13 / £12 With Gift Aid (includes voluntary Gift Aid donation of 10% above standard price): Admission £15.40. Concessions £14.30/£13.20