If painting is a fast car, drawing is more like taking the bus. At least that’s how it felt to me, puttering along on the 27 to Paddington that is the National Portrait Gallery’s trawl through Lucian Freud’s sketches, engravings and even childhood crayonings, daydreaming until my stop, with the occasional flash of colour and flare when one of the exhibition’s “carefully selected group of important paintings” rolled past.
View image in fullscreen Churning out nonsense … Solicitor’s Head, a 2003 etching. Photograph: National Portrait Gallery, London/© The Lucian Freud Archive/Bridgeman Images
This is a sad review to write. Freud seemed an unquestionable genius in his lifetime and I still stand in awe of the great modern paintings with which he won that crown.
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