LUCIAN FREUD: THE PAINTER AND HIS FAMILY

Sigmund Freud, having escaped Nazi Germany in 1938, spent the last year of his life in 20 Maresfield Gardens, Hampstead, where his daughter Anna lived until her death in 1982. In 1986, according to her wishes, the building was turned into a museum dedicated to the life and work of the great Austrian psychoanalyst.

Sigmund’s grandson Lucian was born in 1922, and to mark his centenary year, the Freud Museum asked the esteemed art critic Martin Gayford – who wrote a memoir in 2010 about the experience of sitting for the artist – to curate an exhibition featuring Freud’s paintings and drawings, as well as family photographs, books and letters. The show opened on July 7.

The exhibition includes Freud’s only known sculpture, The Three-legged Horse (1937) and early paintings, including The Palm Tree (1944), gifted to his aunt, Anna. There will also be better-known works, drawn from galleries and private collections, ranging across the artist’s 60-year career. These include several of his portraits of his mother, Lucie, one of which is hung over Sigmund Freud’s famous couch, where his patients would recline during treatment, a centrepiece of the museum.

Lucian Freud, it should be noted, regularly expressed his total disinterest in psychotherapy (though some of those who knew him suggest he might have benefitted from regular sessions). 

Freud Museum London, until January 29, 2023