Palmtree 1944 © The Artist Pastel, chalk and ink on paper 61.5 x 43.5 cm Freud Museum, London

Room 2 Palmtree 1944 This palm tree, which Freud bought from a garden centre in St John's Wood, became part of his studio for many years. It appears in a number of his paintings, including The Painter's Room 1943-4, and Interior in Paddington 1951, though by the early 1950s the plant was looking rather tired. Later in 1944, the year in which this drawing was made, Freud had his first one-man show, at the Lefevre Gallery. Reviews were mixed: John Piper wrote in The Listener that Freud 'has a cultivated feeling for line, when he can be bothered with it, and a natural feeling for colour', though Michael Ayrton, in The Spectator, thought that 'The human forms defeats him because he does not observe it as he does dead birds.'