Visitors to National Gallery will be able to pay ‘as much or as little as they like’ on Friday evenings to see Lucian Freud exhibition in response to cost-of-living crisis
- The scheme will run for the entire Lucian Freud exhibition starting in October
- Tickets for the exhibition can be booked in advance from 26 September
- His stand-out art includes Girl With A White Dog and Naked Girl Asleep
Visitors to the National Gallery can pay ‘as much or as little as they like’ on Friday evenings for the run of a Lucian Freud exhibition in a response to the cost-of-living crisis.
The Pay What You Wish scheme, the first of its kind at the National Gallery, will run for the entire exhibition on Lucian Freud opening on 1 October.
Day trippers will be able to tickets in advance with a minimum payment of £1 required.
The Lucian Freud: New Perspectives exhibition includes portraits of the late Queen, with his diminutive oil portrait done after the monarch sat for him between May 2000 and December 2001.
The painting drew some controversy when it was first unveiled after portraying Her Majesty with a thick neck and a ‘six o’clock shadow’ under her blue-grey chin.
Gallery staff members look at an artwork titled Bell and Esther by British artist Lucian Freud for the upcoming Lucian Freud: New Perspectives
The Pay What You Wish scheme, the first of its kind at the National Gallery, will run for the entire exhibition on Lucian Freud opening on 1 October.
Lucian Freud’s Reflection with Two Children self-portrait. Tickets for the exhibition can be booked in advance from 26 September with a minimum payment of £1 required
Freud, who was the grandson of psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, was born in Berlin in 1922 and the landmark retrospective of his work staged at the National Gallery marks the centenary of his birth.
He moved to England in 1933 and became a British citizen in 1939.
Freud was noticed for his talent early on in his life and, after a spell in the Merchant Navy in 1942, had his first one-man show in 1944, when he was 21.
After the second world war in 1945 Freud concentrated on his artwork and became a full-time painter.
Stand-out pieces include Girl With A White Dog, Naked Girl Asleep and Reflection (self portrait).
Much of his work focused on nude people and for 50 years got friends, family and neighbours to pose for him with no clothes on.
Freud did at the age of 88 on 20 July 2011 in London.
A staff member staring at Freud’s Girl with a Kitten. Freud was the grandson of famous psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud
A woman looking at the Double Portrait. The famous painter moved to England in 1933 and became a British citizen in 1939.
Dr Gabriele Finaldi, director of the National Gallery, London, said: ‘The cost of an exhibition ticket can sometimes make it difficult to visit.
‘While most of our temporary exhibitions are free, the Pay What You Wish scheme will enable practically anyone who wants to see the Freud centenary show to do so.’
The Credit Suisse Exhibition – Lucian Freud: New Perspectives includes more than 65 loans from museums and major private collections around the world and will feature works including Girl with Roses, Reflection with Two Children (self-portrait) and his later works such as The Brigadier, a portrait of Andrew Parker Bowles, the former husband of the Queen Consort.
The exhibition will ‘present new perspectives on Freud’s art, focusing on his tireless and ever-searching commitment to the medium of painting’, the gallery said.
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