Lucian Freud drew the people in his life: friends, lovers, wives, and fellow painters. Most of the portraits were not flattering. In fact, they were so unflinchingly honest that they sometimes veered to the grotesque. “The subject matter is autobiographical,” Freud said. “It’s all to do with hope and memory and sensuality and involvement, really.” He began studying the human face in drawings in the 1930s—carefully mastering his craft in pen, pencil, ink, and charcoal—and continued into the early–21st century. “It is the only point of getting up every morning: to paint, to make something good, to make something even better than before, not to give up, to compete, to be ambitious.” This is the first U.K. museum exhibition to focus on this facet of Freud’s oeuvre. —Elena Clavarino