This is one of a group of 143 state, trial and cancellation proofs of etchings by Lucian Freud (1922-2011) which came from the collection of Marc Balakjian (1938-2017) of Studio Prints. Balakjian was Freud’s printer from 1985 and worked closely with him on the production of his etchings.

The sitter here is Nicola Chambers, who was at the time a third-year student at Camberwell College of Art. The plate was bitten and proofed by Paul Dewis at London Print Studio, and then reproofed and printed by Marc Balakjian. The light silvery tone was the result of an accident that occured during the biting of the plate. Usually Freud's plates were left for 45 minutes in the acid bath, but in this case Dewis had to remove it after only 15 minutes as the hard ground was lifting from the surface of the plate. As a result the etched lines were very shallow and could not hold the normal printing ink properly. Balakjian solved the problem by mixing an ink that would stay in the grooves. He also made a series of trial proofs on a variety of papers. Dewis recalled that the wavy white lines in the sitter's curly hair were achieved by brushing on stopping out varnish.