Lucian Freud: The Painter and His Family review – a ‘delightfully domestic’ show

In 1933, the 11-year-old Lucian Freud and his family fled Nazi Germany for Britain, said Bridget Galton in the Ham & High (London). Five years later, following Hitler’s annexation of Austria, the budding artist’s paternal grandfather Sigmund would follow suit, settling at 20 Maresfield Gardens in Hampstead; he would die there just over a year later. Now a museum, the psychoanalyst’s final home is currently playing host to an “intimate” exhibition exploring his Lucian’s work through the prism of his childhood and relationships with family members. The show brings together a number of portraits of the artist’s mother, children and other relatives, as well as a wealth of archival material including photographs, letters and childhood drawings. In its course, the curators touch on many “lesser-known aspects” of Freud’s life, from his “love of reading” to his “fascination with horses”.

Don’t come expecting to discover much about Freud’s inner life, said Jonathan Jones in The Guardian. In the portraits of family members here, he “strives for utter objectivity”: a likeness of his mother Lucie, hanging just above Sigmund’s famous consulting couch, concentrates as much on her “patterned dress” as it does on her “time-furrowed flesh”. It’s a terrific painting, but it tells us little about the antagonistic relationship between doting mother and resentful son. Indeed, Lucian didn’t seem to think much of his parents’ family, though he was reportedly fond of Sigmund. There’s an “unsettling” 1999 portrait of his son, Ali Boyt, the focus of which is the sitter’s drooping eyelid. It is only through the caption that we learn Boyt was having “severe drug problems” at the time.

Beyond this, the show ignores the more troubling aspects of Freud’s family relationships: for one thing, the fact he left nothing in his will to several of his children goes unmentioned; so too does his complicated attitude to sex, surely a priority given the venue. Moreover, some of the pictures just aren’t that good: a drawing of Freud’s daughter Bella, for instance, “has no character at all”. Ultimately, it’s a missed opportunity.

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I disagree, said Alastair Sooke in The Daily Telegraph. It’s a “tiny” exhibition, and some of the items – such as a chocolate box the young Lucian decorated with pictures of tropical fish – are mere curiosities. On the whole, though, it’s compelling. Placing an imposing picture of his mother lying on a bed above his grandfather’s couch is “brilliantly apt”; both men “passed their days scrutinising supine people”.

Among the other highlights are a selection of illustrations for book jackets; a picture of a palm tree he drew as a teenager, already showing his “characteristic punctiliousness”; and his only known surviving sculpture, a 1937 carving of a three-legged horse. This “delightfully domestic” show is “a must” for anyone intrigued by Freud’s “storied life”.

Until 29 January 2023 at the Freud Museum, London NW3 (020-7435 2002, freud.org.uk)