National Portrait Gallery Acquires Unfinished Lucian Freud Self-Portrait via Tax Scheme

An unfinished oil-on-canvas self-portrait by Lucian Freud, valued at around £600,000, has been acquired by the National Portrait Gallery in London through the Acceptance in Lieu program. The work, dating from the 1980s and closely resembling Freud's 1985 painting "Reflection," was recently discovered and will join the gallery's collection, where Freud had a solo exhibition in 2012. The gallery expressed satisfaction with the acquisition, which adds to a previous bequest from the Lucian Freud Estate of notebooks, drawings, and letters worth approximately £2.9 million, also in lieu of inheritance tax. The Acceptance in Lieu scheme, established in England in 1910, allows cultural assets to offset tax debts, enriching the nation's cultural holdings. In Italy, a similar law (Law 512 of August 2, 1982) permits taxpayers to pay direct and inheritance taxes by transferring cultural assets to the state, but bureaucratic hurdles and lack of information have limited its use. Recent reforms under Franceschini aim to revive the practice, though progress remains slow.