Lucian Freud show sets National Portrait Gallery record The posthumous exhibition has attracted 175,000 people since it opened on February 9, making it the most popular paying show in the gallery's history. It closes on May 27 and the gallery has announced that it will remain open until midnight from May 24-26 to cope with demand. Sandy Nairne, director of the NPG, said: "We are delighted that Lucian Freud Portraits is proving so popular. Visitors are coming to the gallery to experience the sheer brilliance found across seven decades of portraits by one of Britain's greatest artists. The show features Freud's last painting, Portrait of the Hound 2011, which he was working on shortly before his death last July aged 88. Showing his assistant, David Dawson, and Dawson's dog, Eli, it was left unfinished. The 100 works also include Benefits Supervisor Sleeping (1995), which set a record price for a living artist when it was bought by Roman Abramovich for £17.2 million. According to figures from the National Portrait Gallery, its previous most popular paying shows were Mario Testino Portraits in 2002 (visitor numbers: 168,069), David Hockney Portraits in 2006 (151,555) and Annie Leibovitz: A Photographer's Life in 2008 (142,154). Midnight opening tickets are on sale today only at www.npg.org.uk/freud