National Portrait Gallery to Present Major Lucian Freud Exhibition Exploring His Drawings

The National Portrait Gallery will open a landmark exhibition next year offering unprecedented insight into the creative process of Lucian Freud, one of the 20th century’s greatest figurative painters.

Lucian Freud: Drawing into Painting runs from 12 February to 4 May 2026, bringing together 170 drawings, etchings, and paintings—some on public display for the first time. The exhibition makes the case that while Freud is celebrated as a painter, some of the most significant developments in his art can be traced through his work on paper.

“Lucian Freud was one of the greatest observers of the human condition in the twentieth century,” said Sarah Howgate, Senior Curator of Contemporary Collections. “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.”

The exhibition draws heavily on the Lucian Freud Archive held at the National Portrait Gallery, including 48 sketchbooks, childhood drawings, letters, and unfinished paintings. These working documents reveal far more than artistic development—they contain telephone numbers ranging from the gas board to the British aristocracy, love-letter drafts, betting tips, and thoughts on paintings.

Freud drew obsessively from childhood, developing highly finished linear drawings in the 1940s that won critical acclaim. His friendship with Francis Bacon influenced a shift toward a looser painting style, and from the mid-1950s to the 1970s, drawing became a more private activity. He returned to drawing seriously in the mid-1970s and took up etching again in 1982 after a 34-year break, regarding it as a “form of drawing.”

The exhibition pairs drawings with their related paintings, illuminating Freud’s working methods. Watteau’s Pierrot Content (c.1712), on loan from Madrid’s Thyssen-Bornemisza, will be displayed alongside Freud’s response painting and the sketches he made of his own completed work. Constable’s Study of the Trunk of an Elm Tree (c.1821)—which the young Freud once abandoned as too challenging to copy—will hang beside the etching he eventually created decades later.

The exhibition is curated by Howgate in collaboration with artist David Dawson, Director of the Lucian Freud Archive. An accompanying publication features conversations with Bella Freud and David Dawson, plus contributions from Colm Tóibín, Catherine Lampert, and others.