After Chardin Small Plate
After Chardin Small Plate
Signed Print
Lucian Freud
POA
This estimate blends recent public auction records with our own private sale data and network demand.
Etching, 2000
Signed Print Edition of 80
H 15cm x W 20cm
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Auction Results
| Auction Date | Auction House | Artwork | Hammer Price | Return to Seller | Buyer Paid |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| October 2018 | Christie's New York - United States | After Chardin Small Plate - Signed Print | |||
| November 2017 | Bonhams Knightsbridge - United Kingdom | After Chardin Small Plate - Signed Print | |||
| October 2017 | Sotheby's New York - United States | After Chardin Small Plate - Signed Print | |||
| November 2015 | Sotheby's New York - United States | After Chardin Small Plate - Signed Print | |||
| October 2015 | Phillips London - United Kingdom | After Chardin Small Plate - Signed Print | |||
| September 2015 | Sotheby's London - United Kingdom | After Chardin Small Plate - Signed Print | |||
| May 2015 | Sotheby's New York - United States | After Chardin Small Plate - Signed Print |
Meaning & Analysis
This experimental etching was created by Lucian Freud in 2000. The work is a small plate produced in the process of reimagining Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin's painting The Young Schoolmistress (c1737). Likely made in preparation for his larger version of the work, After Chardin, Freud focuses here solely on the ear, eye, and nose of the schoolmistress herself. With sketchy, hatched lines, Freud builds shade and depth, telling of the technique he would carry through to his final etching.
In 1987, some thirteen years before this etching was produced, Lucian Freud was invited by London's National Gallery to participate in their exhibition series titled The Artist's Eye. Freud's was the third exhibition in this series, and the artist was invited "to disrupt for a month or so the usual historical display of the Gallery's paintings". Chardin's original painting, The Young Schoolmistress, was selected by Freud and curated alongside works which - in Freud's words - shared the quality that "they all make me want to go back to work". Indeed, Chardin's painting inspired Freud so much that he not only made two paintings responding to it, but also a reimagining of the subject in a series of etchings over a decade later.
This particular etching, capturing a zoomed-in cross section of Chardin's original, was likely a predatory study for his etching of the entire composition. By magnifying a small element of Chardin's work, Freud experimented directly onto the etching plate, using hatched marks in layers to build tone, texture, and impressive modulations in light. As the title of the work suggests, the plate is small, but offers us a glimpse into Freud's mastery over his etching process. Freud is renowned today for his treatment of the etching plate almost like a canvas, and this work conveys his adept command of line when printing a portrait.
