In this etching Lucian Freud, one of the most important British artists of his generation, takes inspiration from a picture painted by John Constable in around 1821, called Study of the Trunk of an Elm Tree. This painting was bequeathed to the V&A by Isabel Constable, John Constable’s daughter, in 1888. Freud attempted to copy it when he was a student, but gave up because it was so difficult. This print, made decades later and titled After Constable's "Elm", can be understood as an artist’s response to another artist’s work, with Freud offering a comment on the Constable painting: the 21st century addressing the 19th.

The V&A lent extensively to a retrospective of the works of John Constable chosen by Lucian Freud, which was held in Paris in 2002. The French catalogue for this exhibition included a conversation between Freud and William Feaver, the exhibition curator. The British Council reprinted a translation of the conversation in the book Freud on Constable. Lucian Freud made this new etching specially for the book.