Last weekend, true to my personal form, I made it to an exhibition at the eleventh hour. I managed to get some tickets during the week, and on the last day of the Lucian Freud exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery attended the very last slot available, 10.30pm on the Saturday night. In the event, this was quite a special time to go, perhaps because we all knew that this was the very last opportunity to see so many paintings together of such a great artist. Also, there is something exciting about being out and about viewing an exhibition on a Saturday night. Many of the paintings have been resonating with me since, not least this one, "The Painter's mother resting, 1982 - 1984" Although I was familiar with the painting, seeing it "in the flesh" is something altogether different - the applied paint of the fabric of the white clothes and the bedding is luminous, as is the presence of his mother, as she lies on her bed - quite simply, appearing at peace with or at least reconciled to whatever death might bring, which itself cannot be far away (and came to her about a year after this painting was completed).
Among the most powerful portraits, for me, were his self portraits, made at different stages of his life, of which two below.
Sometimes, when I see great paintings such as these, I wonder if photography can ever get close.
Sacrilege, I know. And.... I will immediately contradict myself by conceding that the photographic portraits of Freud himself (alongside others) by his assistant David Dawson, which occupied a small space of the whole, were amongst the most vivid and impressive of the exhibition. A different medium, a different tone and resonance altogether, but - however you might wish to define Art, and I don't wish to attempt or even consider it - on any level, undeniably, they "work", and they are great.
© David Dawson
© David Dawson
© David Dawson
© David Dawson
Finally, the very last painting Freud made, which was on his easel when he died in July last year.
Called Portrait of the Hound it is, of course, also a portrait of David Dawson.
