Lucian Freud proves that beauty is only skin deep at National Gallery.

Lucian Freud has been the darling of the art world for decades. His bohemian life behind the canvas drew as much attention as his work on canvas.

He's painted the Queen and caused much bewildering controversy with a portrait of Fat Sue in Benefits Supervisor Sleeping. And one of his creations is even tattooed on Kate Moss to boot (god, she's cool).

When he exhibited in the National Portrait Gallery, I jumped at a chance to see him as his artworks are intriguingly grotesque and yet beautiful.

This extensive and comprehensive exhibition showed the length and breadth of Freud's career, as well as his most famous paintings. It's clear that Freud (like his grandfather before him) liked seeing people and those people didn't mind having a brutal mirror shown to them. Everyone from aristocracy, military leaders, celebrities and ordinary people were open to interpretation by Freud and his thick brush set.

And this insight made for the most wonderful and painful portraits. Take his 'gay' friend Leigh Bowery in a Man with Leg Up; it's a nude but the sorrowful expression in Bowery's eyes exposes more about him than all the flesh. He died of HIV related illnesses 7 months after marrying a woman. Here was a man who lived his life in the spotlight, a flamboyant character who (possibly) never came to terms with who he was - even in the debauched setting of the British art world. And it was this that you saw in the portrait.

Freud is rumoured to have fathered over 40 children, but only married twice. A charismatic, philosophical artist, cool and devastatingly handsome man, it's not hard to understand why women were weak to resist. Especially one who genuinely see you; as he said 'I paint people, not because of what they are like, not exactly in spite of what they are like, but who they happen to be'. It's this intuitive ability to see deep in the soul. And that's seductive to anyone.