In the 1940s, as a young man in London, the painter Lucian Freud became close to handsome colleagues Adrian Ryan and John Minton—very close, especially to Ryan. During the war, and for a time afterwards, the three would meet at Freud’s house in St. John’s Wood, for sex. Freud, of course, would become an unapologetic womanizer, fathering 14 children by different women and sleeping with his female muses. This new exhibition explores Freud’s complex sexuality through the prism of his secret gay threesome, with its attendant love, betrayal, and bitterness. “It exposes Lucian as the type of person he was which I think you can see in his paintings” explains curator John Machin. “It shows his unhappiness, that he wasn’t unassailable.” —E.C.