Lucian Freud: Portraits, National Portrait Gallery, London

No-one could ever have accused Lucian Freud of being a sentimental painter.

The eye he cast on his subjects was cold to the point of cruel. No-one escaped his scrutiny, not even Queen Elizabeth II, whose portrait, sadly, is not included in this massive retrospective.

Freud, who died last year aged 88, acted as a consultant on the show, which surely helped secure his work from public and private collections: there are 130 portraits in all.