Lucian Freud returned to etching in 1982 after a hiatus of thirty-four years, having previously made several etchings 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. As he explained, ‘going from one medium to another, from drawing to painting, say, does refresh.’ Feaver observed that it was Freud’s large portraits heads, first begun in the mid-eighties, ‘where his printmaking originality developed.’ Bella (1987) is an example of this type, and in 2007 it was described by the prints specialist Starr Figura as one of ‘four major plates that rank among his most daringly rendered compositions to date’. The much larger size of these plates enhanced the presence of the subject it carried. It also encouraged Freud to work from copper plates mounted on an easel, a practice he began in 1987 and continued until his death. In Bella, the sitter wears the same white shirt, buttoned to the neck, as she did when sitting for a painting made shortly before this print. Notwithstanding any similarity with that painting, the composition of this etching seems to reprise in reverse an earlier head portrait of Bella Freud made in 1980.

The fashion designer Bella Freud (b. 1961) was the daughter of Lucian Freud and Bernardine Coverley. She sat for her father over long periods of time in the eighties and nineties. She was one of the five figures depicted in Freud’s magnum opus, Large Interior, W11 (after Watteau) (1981–83). The painting Bella and Esther (1987–88) depicted her and her sister Esther Freud. She sat for full-length nude portraits on at least two occasions, including Bella (1982–83) and Nude Portrait on a Red Sofa (1989–91), as well as a variety of smaller, clothed portrait paintings made in 1980, 1981, 1986 and 1986–87. One of the last paintings she sat for was made in 1996, when she was depicted full-length, barefoot, seated in a chair. Beside this print of 1987, she was the subject of etchings including Bella (1982) and Bella in her Pluto T-Shirt (1995).

Bella was published by James Kirkman in London and Alexander Brooke in New York. It was printed by Marc Balakjian at Studio Prints, London. A framed impression of the print appears in a photograph of Bella and Esther Freud taken in 1992 by Chris Dawes.