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.

Freud made two prints of his garden at 138, Kensington Church Street, of which this is the first. He worked on this etching over two winters, looking from the veranda out into the overgrown garden. It took two years because he failed to finish the plate in the first winter and decided to wait a year to resume work on it. In the interim, he tried to avoid going into the garden in case he inadvertently spoiled the scene. The composition is very detailed and he was keen to avoid any sense of harmony and order, to the extent that he would stop out and redraw areas of the plate if the felt they were 'rhyming' with other areas. The plate was bitten on 2 February 1999, and Marc Balakjian produced a series of proofs experimenting with tone. The three trial proofs in the V&A show some of these variations, designed to bring light into the composition. Of the three, this one, E.406-2020, is most similar to the edition.