The initially overwhelming sense of density and discordance in Garden in Winter belies carefully rendered botanical forms. Freud worked on the etching on a veranda overlooking his garden in Kensington Church Street in London over two consecutive winters between 1997 and 1999. Having not completed it the first winter, he waited until the following year to continue it. This process reveals his dedication to close observation of nature, as well as a painstaking and unhurried attention to detail.

The composition can be broken down into thousands of marks and lines, of differing densities and directions, through which Freud establishes depth, light, and a visually recognisable landscape. It is almost identical – though in reverse – to Freud’s 1994 Garden Painting. Yet unlike this earlier painted work, Garden in Winter has a uniquely vertical emphasis - something unusual for a landscape subject, which might typically expect a horizontal format. It is one of two prints Freud made of the garden during this period, alongside two paintings. The other print, entitled The Painter’s Garden (an impression of which is also in the Courtauld Gallery’s collection), was completed over two summers, and as such offers a conceptual foil to Garden in Winter.

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. 84 on pp. 214- 215
pp. 36, 184, 256
This refers to the editioned print.