Once you have been to the Lucian Freud exhibition at the National Gallery, I strongly recommend a trip south of the river (fifteen minutes brisk walk from Westminster tube station) to see a wholly contrasting exhibition, Plant Portraits, at the Garden Museum. It’s small, intimate and full of unexpected insight into Freud’s haphazard engagement throughout his life with plants, both indoors and out.

Here are some snaps.

Unripe Tangerine (1946) from the collection of Colin St. John Wilson at Pallant House:-

Cecil Beaton contact sheets (1955) of Freud at Coombe Priory:-

Cyclamen from a Private Collection (1964):-

An etching of a Thistle (1985):-

Plant fragment (c.1970):-

They are not quite what you expect which makes you look at them closely.