Serving as a teaser to next year’s Lucian Freud exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, their current display of the Lucian Freud Archive in Room 26 has had a little touch-up.
Focusing on Freud’s draughtsmanship and printmaking, the display brings together a pair of newly acquired etchings depicting his daughter Bella in her Pluto T-shirt (1995); one is a trial proof from before her facial features were drawn in. Below them is a sketchbook open to a rudimentary sketch for the etching to establish Bella’s basic posture.
Freud’s etching tools are also present, consisting of an etching stone and three etching needles. Curiously, one of the needles is a makeshift etching needle made by Freud from two corkscrews.
Meanwhile, a central display highlights Freud’s close friend Susanna Chancellor, who would become a recurrent sitter throughout his career. One of the sketchbooks shows a large portrait of her drawn in charcoal. More interesting for me is the etching plate for Conversation (1999), shown next to a photograph of Susanna with her mother-in-law taken several years before the etching was begun.
On using the photograph as inspiration for the etching, Freud remarked:
‘Two very small portraits, one smiling, the other having a drink. Very blurred, so there’s terrific scope for remaking.’
Nigel Ip 
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