This self portrait was made when the artist was 74 years old. Etching plates were delivered to the artist's studio in Kensington Church Street with their surfaces pre-coated with a black wax and Freud would draw directly onto the plate from life, as we see illustrated in David Dawson's colour photograph 'Etching Plate for Eli', 2002, 39.8 mm x 59.4 cm, coll. National Portrait Gallery, London.

Lucian Freud was one of the foremost figurative artists of the second half of the twentieth century, celebrated for his intensely observed portraits. After a few youthful experiments in the 1940s, he made no further prints until he took up etching again in 1982. This was his first formal self-portrait print to be published, and was one of a series of life-sized portrait etchings produced during the 1990s. The stark effects of bright light and deep shadow on the face and neck are softened by the substantial plate tone where the plate was not wiped clean of ink, particularly apparent on the shoulders. That effect is due entirely to the hand of the printer, not the etcher: the 58 impressions of this plate are highly variable in their inking, so much so that Freud was reported as wanting the printer, his long-term collaborator Mark Balakjian at Studio Prints, London, to co-sign the prints.

The frontal pose and top lighting should in principle give a balanced image but Freud was concerned to document the many asymmetries in his ageing face – eyebrow, nose and mouth all rise markedly to the (artist’s) left and when one becomes accustomed to the contrasts, there is a striking difference between his lazy left eye and his piercing right pupil. Freud was appointed to the Order of Merit in 1993 and he presented an artist's proof of this etching to The Queen to form part of the Order of Merit portrait series.

Text adapted from Portrait of the Artist, The Royal Collection Trust, London, 2016