There’s an awkwardness to the big Lucian Freud exhibition that has arrived at the National Gallery. For a start, what is it doing at the National Gallery, occupying the same old master rooms occupied most recently by Raphael and before that by Titian? Freud (1922-2011) was a sizzling contemporary presence, no arguments there, but does he already deserve such a grand promotion to the ranks of Raphael and Titian?
Then there is the arrangement of the show itself. It’s broadly chronological, but every now and then stops being chronological and turns thematic, leaping across the decades to create stretches of temporal confusion.
These are big rooms too: Raphael-sized rooms. The work gathered here doesn’t quite fill them. Five or six important paintings that would have
