The Museum will be closed on Easter Friday 29 March and Easter Sunday 31 March. We are open as usual on Saturday 30 March.

Lucian Freud as a Child

9 April 2014 to 25 May 2014

A temporary display offering a rare opportunity to see childhood letters and drawings by Lucian Freud.

Lucian with brothers Clement and Stephen Gabriel and their father Ernst Freud on holiday in Hiddensee, Germany, 1928

Lucian Freud left Berlin for London with his parents and two brothers in 1933, settling in St John’s Wood. Lucian was sent to boarding school at Dartington Hall in Devon.

His letters to his mother and father from this time give an insight into the artist as a young boy adapting to life in a new country and illustrated with his comical childhood drawings. He describes playing cricket in the rain, building model railways and he even urges his architect father to start building skyscrapers.