The Easel

17th February 2026

Lucian Freud The Curator’s Egg National Portrait Gallery

John K Grande | Artlyst | 13th February 2026

Lucien Freud is box office gold, at least in Britain. Why not raid his archives to show rarely seen drawings? Some critics think this is a marvellous idea, one citing Freud’s “instinct for the essential, the indelicate, the confrontational”. Other critics seem less convinced. If the drawings are so good, why pad out the show with famous paintings? Says the writer, the show is “a strange mix of great and insignificant”. Another is even sharper: “ Freud did churn out a lot of nonsense as well as his nuggets of greatness.”

Seurat and the sea – Courtauld Gallery

Diana Bentley | MSN | 16th February 2026

Seurat’s ‘pointillist’ dotting was a great insight into painting technique. It is not well suited to turbulent or dramatic scenes but is perfect for seascapes, which comprise half of his small output. These images perfectly capture sea haze which appears on still summer days. But there’s more. Such works are calm but also slightly eerie. Perhaps with so little little visual action and few people, our focus returns to Seurat’s depiction of light. Given the intricacy of his technique perhaps that’s exactly what he wanted.

10th February 2026

No longer the best advert for good art

Pierre d’Alancaisez | The Critic | 5th February 2026

Is contemporary art “stuck”? If so, is that because artists can’t imagine the future or because they are held back by “legacy cultural institutions”? Such issues are an unintended highlight of a survey at London’s pioneering Saatchi gallery. Saatchi saw its role as encouraging “a reckless, speculative” production of art. Not much of the art that resulted was great, but the approach put an intense focus on the “now”. In contrast, art in 2026 is weighed down with culture war arguments about the past  A video (5 min) is here.

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