Lucian Freud in London: Local hero LUCIAN FREUD is suddenly everywhere in London. When he died last summer, aged 89, he was completing plans for two surveys of his work: more than 100 of his painted portraits have just gone on view at the National Portrait Gallery (NPG); an equal number of works on paper will soon be shown at the Blaine/Southern gallery. Both shows will then travel to America. Photographs of the artist in his studio by David Dawson, his longtime assistant and model, cover the walls at the Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert gallery. And Sotheby's and Christie's prominently feature Freud's paintings, drawings and etchings in their February sales. A torrent of mythmaking washes over it all. "Freud is widely acknowledged as one of the greatest realist painters," writes Sarah Howgate in the NPG catalogue, placing him in the company of Ingres, Courbet and Rembrandt. Tales about Freud's wit, intelligence, charm and - in later life - prodigious hard work stand on firmer ground. The artist had said of his paintings that "everything is autobiographical," so gossip, too, has its place. The fact that he fathered at least 14 children enhances the Olympian image being fashioned. So too does his negligence about their upbringing, which must make furious at least a few of their mothers. A friend of Freud's once said he had a cloven hoof. This was evidently part of his seducer's arsenal, along with his good looks. It also informed his vision. His self-portrait "Reflection" from 1981-82 (pictured) reveals quite a bit of sympathy for the devil. Painting portraits was his life's work, so the NPG show is the main event. Astonish, disturb, seduce, convince. This was the artist's credo, which apparently informed his work by the time he was 20. Now it can be bought on T-shirts, mugs and tote bags at the gift shop. Among the early works is a 1946 self-portrait, "Man with a Thistle," powerful and confident. Two arresting 1947 portraits of his wide-eyed first wife Kitty Garman introduce us to a startled young woman. By 1950, the year they split, she looks terrified and trapped. A 1952 portrait of Freud's soon-to-be second wife Caroline Blackwood, an even more wide-eyed aristocrat and writer, features a radiant beauty. Two years later, she looks wan and imprisoned. That marriage, his last, ended in 1959. Like many sitters, Freud's often look forlorn. Yet these early works are thrilling - thinly painted, intensely observed, sometimes surrealist and often awkward. There is a kind of magic about them, poetic, haunting and distinctive. One glance and they stay fixed in memory. What a debut for an artist who was largely self-taught. In the 1960s, influenced by his great friend and fellow painter Francis Bacon, Freud began using heftier brushes and thick paint. Nakedness takes over, canvasses get big. Grandees pose. In the 1980s Freud became obsessed by skin, with sometimes creepy results. Sitters who were ravishing in life look ravaged in paint, like burn victims. The work duly astonishes and disturbs, but rarely seduces or convinces. Then there is big, fat, naked Leigh Bowery, a transvestite performance artist who modelled for a series of portraits in the early 1990s. Unlike the passive, vacant look of so many of Freud's subjects, Bowery's mounds of flesh have presence; his expression is commanding. It is as if Freud was wowed and so he wows us, too. The show ends with portraits of naked Mr Dawson with his dog. The very last, from 2011, is unfinished. The exhibition starts on a high note and ends on a poignant one. "Lucian Freud: Portraits" is at the National Portrait Gallery until May 27th, and then at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth from July 1st to October 28th