Laura Gascoigne

Do we need another Lucian Freud exhibition?

If only the painter had stuck to plants rather than naked flesh: two new shows, at the National Gallery and Garden Museum, reviewed

‘Still Life with Zimmerlinde’, c.1950, by Lucian Freud. Credit: © Christie’s Images / © The Lucian Freud Archive. all rights reserved 2022 / Bridgeman Images

  • Lucian Freud: New Perspectives

    National Gallery, until 22 January 2023

  • Lucian Freud: Plant Portraits

    Garden Museum, until 5 March 2023

Do we need another Lucian Freud exhibition? After years of exposure to his paintings of naked bodies posed like casualties of a car crash in a nudist camp, we might have reached the ‘move along, nothing to see here’ point. But it seems we can’t get enough of the monstre sacré.

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