I popped along to this exhibition at the Royal Academy. I’ve seen a fair bit of Lucian Freud over the years, often his stark portraits of others – this exhibition had a lot of his self-portraits, many from private collections. I can’t help thinking when looking at Lucian Freud’s paintings and back story, “you mad old bastard”.
His self-portraits are indeed uncompromising:
And these are also very interesting:

this was a study, but it reminds me of Ingres’ sketches or Picasso’s Mujer con Mantilla 
mad old bastard 
he really was well aware he was a cruel, weird, fuck



