What appears at first glance to be an abstract arrangement of shadow, light, and line coalesces into a cropped detail of a face in profile. The composition reveals a downcast eye and sloped nose, before settling centrally around an ear, described by Lucian Freud as “the most beautiful ear in art”. After Chardin (Small Plate) is one of two etchings by Freud inspired by the French artist Jean-Siméon Chardin’s painting The Young Schoolmistress (1737; National Gallery, London).

Freud was fascinated by Chardin’s painting and painted two works in response to it, followed by two etchings. The larger print, an impression of which is also in the Courtauld Gallery collection (G.2024.SP.3), reiterates the 18th-century composition, while this small print focusses on the ear and earring of the schoolmistress, a detail which Freud felt he had previously – and erroneously – overlooked. However, the severely cropped view distances the print from its original inspiration; the enforced proximity makes the face almost unrecognisable. This proof impression, close to the second of two versions, or states, included more hatched lines in the negative space to the right of the profile. By building up this area of thick shadow, Freud succeeded in bringing the woman’s face more assertively forward.

Studio Prints, London; accepted under the Cultural Gifts Scheme by HM Government from the archive of Studio Prints gifted by the Balakjian family and allocated to The Courtauld, 2024.

Treves, Toby, Lucian Freud : Catalogue Raisonné of the Prints. London : Modern Art Press, 2022.
Cat. 90 on pp. 226-227
pp. 34, 222, 224, 252
This refers to the editioned print.

Recto, lower left, within plate: 'LF'; lower left, below plate mark, graphite: '2nd and final state'