Lucian Freud returned to etching in 1982 after a hiatus of thirty-four years, having previously made several prints with this medium in 1946–48. Robert Flynn Johnson observed that Freud’s new idiom of etching used ‘a more relaxed line than his earlier etchings. They reflect a spontaneity and simplicity of execution rarely seen in the frequently oversophisticated world of contemporary printmaking.’ Freud told his biographer William Feaver that the impetus to make etchings ‘was a direct jump from paintings to etchings’; almost all of Freud’s later prints emerged from compositions begun in painting. Feaver observed that it was Freud’s large portraits heads, first begun in the mid-eighties, ‘where his printmaking originality developed.’ In smaller etchings such as Ib (1984), made between 1982 and 1984, Freud used dynamic channels of flowing lines that encompass large areas of the composition. In Ib, the flowing forms of the sitter’s hair and jawline produce a forceful, rhythmic effect. Here as in most of Freud’s figurative work, the startling presence of the human figure is underpinned by interlocking the literal forms of the medium and the tangible, volumetric quality of the represented subject.

Ib relates to a painting of the same sitter, made in 1983–84 immediately before Freud began work on the etching. (Freud drew into the plate from life and so the printed image reversed the composition of the painting.) The two works are almost the same size, and this suggests the importance of scale in Freud’s sense of composition; the size of a composition was appropriate to its relative grandeur or intimacy. In this picture, the slumbering form of the artist’s daughter suggested a more intimate scale. Her head rests on the arm of a sofa. Half of her fringe is pushed upwards and away from her eyes, and the other side of the fringe is tucked neatly behind her ear. A strong artificial light overhead illuminates her face and her profile casts a narrow area of shadow on the sofa.

Isobel (‘Ib’) Boyt (b. 1961) was Lucian Freud and Suzy Boyt’s daughter. She sat for several paintings by her father including Ib (1990), Ib and her Husband (1992) and Ib Reading (1997). When interviewed in 2004, Isobel Boyt explained that sitting for Freud was ‘a way of having a relationship with my dad’.

Ib was published in 1986 by James Kirkman in London and Brooke Alexander in New York. It was printed by Terry Wilson at Palm Tree Studios, London.