Room Introduction | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9

 Room 2 

The second room contains some of the earliest paintings and drawings in the exhibition, including work produced during the Second World War. Freud was too young to be called up when war broke out in 1939, but in 1941, aged 18 and anxious to get away from London, he had gone to Liverpool. Here he had hung around the docks, and eventually got himself enlisted in the Merchant Navy. 'I liked the idea of adventure - the Ancient Mariner.' After only a few months, he was discharged sick and exempted from conscription. In 1942 he and fellow painter John Craxton rented rooms in St John's Wood, North London. In the absence of anyone to sit for him, Freud painted and drew from inanimate objects: a stuffed zebra head, dead monkeys from a local pet shop, and a Palmtree 1944. After the war, Freud was able to travel, to the Scilly Isles, to Paris, and to Greece, where he painted an Unripe Tangerine 1946. Room 2 also contains works on paper, including etchings of Freud's first wife, Kitty, a watercolour of a dead monkey and a drawing of  Francis Bacon from 1952.