170 Lucian Freud drawings star in National Portrait Gallery exhibition in 2026

Lucian Freud: Drawing into Painting is a major new exhibition that will open at the National Portrait Gallery (NPG) in London on 12 February 2026. It will dive into one of Britain’s most celebrated artists and how he used drawing to shape his work.

Curators are claiming that the highly-anticipated show will be the UK’s most comprehensive museum exhibition exploring Lucian Freud’s drawings. They promise that very rarely-seen drawings and preparatory studies will be shown alongside iconic paintings, offering an unprecedented insight into Freud’s creative process.

It’s a return to the National Portrait Gallery for Lucian Freud — who died in 2011 — as an exhibition of his portraits welcomed a mammoth 246,000 visitors in 2012. It made it the most popular paid-for exhibition the Gallery had ever staged at the time. Bosses will be hoping to repeat some of that huge popularity.

What’s on display in Lucian Freud: Drawing into Painting

Freud is best known as a painter, but some of the most significant changes in his art can be traced through his drawing.

That’s why this exhibition will display 170 drawings and etchings (and yes, some paintings) so visitors can trace how this medium remained a core part of his career. 

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Freud drew obsessively from an early age, and the exhibition’s starting point is the Lucian Freud Archive, which the NPG acquired for the nation in 2015 from Freud’s estate after his death. 

The archive comprises over 150 childhood drawings and 48 sketchbooks, plus letters and unfinished paintings. A significant number of items from this archive will be on display in this new London exhibition, and many of them will be seen publicly for the first time.

These documents reveal Freud's thought processes throughout his career, and they contain not only sketches of different kinds, but also curious details such as recurring motifs and telephone numbers (ranging from the gas board to the British aristocracy). They also feature love-letter drafts, betting tips, and thoughts on paintings.

Some of Freud’s own paintings will be exhibited too. These include Girl in Bed, a portrait of Irish writer and Freud’s second wife Caroline Blackwood, and his 2002 portrait of fellow artist David Hockney, which sold at Sotheby’s in 2021 for over £14m.

A number of drawings and etchings visitors will see in Drawing into Painting relate to specific paintings by other artists, of which they will be displayed alongside. 

The most high-profile in the exhibition will be Jean Antoine Watteau’s Pierrot Content from 1712, which will be coming on loan from the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum in Madrid so it can be displayed alongside an impressive series of sketches Freud made to help him create his own painted response to Watteau’s work.

Freud’s etching After Constable’s Elm (2003) will also be shown next to the work that inspired it — John Constable’s Study of the Trunk of an Elm Tree (about 1821) — which a young Lucian first saw in the V&A when he was a 17-year-old student.

“I am excited that Lucian Freud: Drawing into Painting brings together the artist’s finest drawings from all over the world, some seen in this exhibition for the first time,” exhibition curator Sarah Howgate said.

“Widely known as a painter, this exhibition interrogates his lesser-known work as a draughtsman” and it is “a wonderful opportunity to understand his behind-the-scenes workings and day-to-day thinking as an artist” she added.

Lucian Freud National Portrait Gallery tickets

Tickets to Lucian Freud: Drawing into Painting are available to pre-book now. This art exhibition is likely to be popular so advance booking is highly recommended.

Standard Adult tickets are £23. But if you’re aged 25 and under you can get £5 tickets every Friday to Sunday. And National Portrait Gallery members get in completely free. Or, if you visit on Saturdays from 17:30 to 20:00, you’re able to just ‘pay what you can.’

Lucian Freud drawing exhibition catalogue

A huge 224-page book accompanies the exhibition. Also called Lucian Freud: Drawing into Painting, the catalogue traces the unconventional path from his drawing practice to his painting, and back again.

It also features conversations with David Dawson, Freud’s close friend and assistant, and Bella Freud, the artist’s daughter, and insightful essays by writer and curator Catherine Lampert, British Museum drawings curator Isabel Seligman, and acclaimed novelist Colm Tóibín will further illuminate Freud’s world and legacy. It’s one of the highlights of 2026's upcoming new art books, and is a must-buy for fans of Freud. It's available to pre-order now.

Other 2026 exhibitions at the National Portrait Gallery

Freud's show is just one highlight of quite a blockbuster year for exhibitions at London’s National Portrait Gallery. 

Another icon of the 20th century will also take center stage, as Marilyn Monroe: A Portrait will be a major exhibition to mark what would have been the star’s 100th birthday. That show will open in June.

In March, the very first museum exhibition in the UK dedicated to the celebrated American photographer Catherine Opie will open. And the hugely popular photographer Tim Walker gets an exhibition too in the autumn.

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