Now open at London’s National Portrait Gallery, Drawing into Painting is the UK’s most comprehensive museum exhibition exploring Lucian Freud’s drawings.
Bringing together 170 drawings, etchings and paintings, some on display for the first time, the exhibition offers unprecedented insight into the creative process and working methods of one of the greatest realist artists of the twentieth century, Lucian Freud (1922-2011).
By highlighting drawings in dialogue with paintings, the exhibition demonstrates how Freud used drawing not merely as preparation, but as an essential tool for observation, exploration and understanding his subjects.
Drawing into Painting explores how, although best known as a painter, some of the most significant changes in Lucian Freud’s art can be traced through his drawing. Freud drew obsessively from an early age, and the exhibition’s starting point is an accumulation of childhood drawings, 48 sketchbooks, letters and unfinished paintings which comprise the Lucian Freud Archive at the National Portrait Gallery.
In the 1940s, Freud’s practice developed into highly finished linear observational drawings, which were much admired by critics at the time.
The artist then turned his attention to painting and a looser approach to the medium, in part influenced by his friendship with Francis Bacon. From the mid-1950s to the 1970s, painting was Freud’s main preoccupation, and drawing became a backdrop, a more private activity often played out in sketchbooks.
Freud only returned to drawing in earnest in the mid-1970s when his painting had reached its full maturity. In 1982, after a 34-year hiatus, he returned to etching, which he regarded as a ‘form of drawing’.
Lucian Freud: Drawing into Painting is curated by Sarah Howgate, the NPG’s Senior Curator of Contemporary Collections, in collaboration with David Dawson, artist, and Director of the Lucian Freud Archive.
Sarah Howgate said:
“Lucian Freud was one of the greatest observers of the human condition in the twentieth-century. Widely known as a painter, this exhibition interrogates his lesser-known work as a draughtsman. I am excited that Lucian Freud: Drawing into Painting brings together the artist’s finest drawings from all over the world, some seen in this exhibition for the first time, and reunites them with the corresponding paintings. This exhibition, taking place in London, the city Freud loved more than any other, reveals a less familiar side of his work, a wonderful opportunity to understand his behind-the-scenes workings and day to day thinking as an artist.”
Lucian Freud: Drawing Into Painting continues until 4 May 2026. For further information: npg.org.uk
Image: A visitor observing Portrait of a Young Man (1944) in the exhibition Lucian Freud: Drawing into Painting at the National Portrait Gallery.
Portrait of a Young Man,1944, Lucian Freud, Black crayon and chalk on paper, © The Lucian Freud Archive. All Rights Reserved 2026 / Bridgeman Images, Lent by a private collection.
Photo copyright © David Parry.
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