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.

This print is based on Freud's copy of The Young Schoolmistress, c.1737, by Jean-Simeon Chardin (1699-1779). The painting is in the National Gallery, London, and Freud included it in his selection for 'The Artist's Eye: Lucian Freud' at the National Gallery in 1987, and chose it again when invited to make a painting in response to any work in the gallery's collection for the exhibition 'Encounters: New Art from Old' which opened in 2000. In his two paintings he made numerous changes to the composition, cropping much of the area around the figures and eliminating varous details. He then made two etchings - this, and 'After Chardin (small plate)' - where he cropped the picture even more. This print is about the same size as Chardin's painting. When proofing, Balakjian experimented with various ways of narrowing the contrasts in the plate. The most successful used a even, transparent dark tone, which Freud chose for the edition.