Painting: Ib 1983-84.
Oil on canvas. 14x12" (35.6x30.5cm).
Private collection, United Kingdom
Photo: © Private Collection/The Bridgeman Art Library © 2007 Lucian Freud
Etching: Ib 1984, published 1986.
Etching Plate: 11 11/16 x 11 3/4" (29.7x29.9cm). Sheet: 22 3/16 x 20 5/8" (56.4x52.4cm). Publisher: James Kirkman, London, and Brooke Alexander, New York. Printer: Terry Wilson at Palm Tree Studios, London. Edition: 50.
Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery, New York.
Digital Image Courtesy The Museum of Modern Art, Jonathan Muzikar. © 2007 Lucian Freud
"I want paint to work as flesh... I would wish my portraits to be of the people, not like them. Not having the look of the sitter, being them... As far as I'm concerned the paint is the person."1
"The effect in space of two different people can be as different as the effect of a candle and an electric light bulb. Therefore the painter must be as aware of the air surrounding his subject as with that subject itself."2
While the impression of the "surrounding air" in his paintings and etchings is quite different, in both mediums he conveys a definite sense of space and location. In this particular etching, all he's needed is a shadow and angle of hair to convey a sense of a face lying on a surface.
References:
1. Larence Gowing, Lucian Freud, London 1982, pp190-1, quoted in Interpreting Lucian Freud by David Alan Mellor, Tate Publishing, 2002.
2. "Face Off" by Martin Gayford, Modern Painters, Autumn 2004.