Lucian Freud is best known for his raw and expressive figurative paintings. Working from life, he made portraits of those closest to him – friends, family, associates and lovers, as well as himself. Yet it’s the artist’s black-and-white prints that highlight human presence with even greater intensity.
24 of his etchings have been acquired for The New Art Gallery Walsall’s Permanent Collection through the Cultural Gifts Scheme, administered by Arts Council England. This remarkable gift totals 80 items, including etchings by Frank Auerbach, Marc Balakjian, Stephen Conroy, Leon Kossoff, Celia Paul and Dorothea Wight, many of which are now on view in a major exhibition, Studio Prints: Celebrating the Balakjian Collection.
Displayed along one gallery wall are closely-cropped portraits by Freud, who has etched traces of life into the skin of sitters including ‘Kai’ (1991-2), who was the adult son of his muse, Suzy Boyt. Though not his father, Freud was very close to Kai, who seems at ease and lost in thought in the presence of the artist. With dense cross hatching, Freud has given a sculptural quality and depth to Kai’s face, the folds of his shirt and strong neck, where shadows fall.
At over life-size, this head is imposing, while each line appears as if under a magnifying lens. It belongs to a series of large-scale etchings which Freud made during his final decades. Among them is ‘The Painter’s Doctor (2005-6), which features Dr Michael Gormley who looks down, through his round glasses in a contemplative pose.
It reflects reality: Gormley sat for 32 2-hour sessions before this work was finished and spent the time reading. Working like a medic himself, with an etching needle, Freud wanted to get under the skin of his sitters, from his physician to his beloved dog Pluto who also makes an appearance.
The show celebrates Freud’s creative collaboration with those who posed for him, as well as his printmakers. The newly acquired works come from the archive of London based Studio Prints, which was established by the artist Dorothea Wight in 1968. Wight, alongside her husband, Marc Balakjian, produced prints for world-renowned British artists for over 40 years.
Balakjian had a particularly close relationship with Freud and supported him in the development of his etchings, helping to produce some of his best regarded works. By including cancellation prints, copper plates and multiples, this thoughtful exhibition demystifies the process of printmaking and reveals the decisions which both men made, often together.
While Freud would draw on copper plates, Balakjian would drop them in acid, coat them with ink, and press them to paper to achieve the final artwork. Freud sought, and valued, his opinion on the inking, cropping, and tonal effects of light and dark.
As well as being expert printmakers who worked with other artists, Balakjian and Wight were extremely accomplished artists in themselves, particularly noted for their mastery of the difficult mezzotint technique. A real highlight of this show is a wall of prints by this talented but overlooked couple.
Places seem to hold memories and meaning in the surreal visions of Balakjian, who has focused on strange manmade structures. Human presence is hinted at in prints such as ‘In the silence of passing years’ (1980), where a gate has been half cloaked in fabric, while several bricks have been wrapped in rope. The contrast between hard and soft textures is accentuated by atmospheric shadows which play on the wall behind.
This same poetic quality infuses ‘Behind the Curtains’ by Wight, in which a thin strip of soft blue sky emerges between heavy, draped curtains. It belongs to her wider and evocative series of landscapes seen through symbolic windows, where there are no figures, as if inviting the viewer to become a protagonist in the scene.
However, in the next gallery, figures return with powerful force in prints by contemporary artists. One wall displays the solitary male characters of Stephen Conroy, who scream, stare and stand in isolation. These realistic depictions emphasise the sitters’ psychological condition, which seems to electrify the body, and hair of the haunting, costumed figure in ‘Silence’ (1992).
On a wall opposite the mood shifts, thanks to Celia Paul. She has cast her female gaze upon family members: her mother, sister and herself. From soft, shimmering greys and grainy tones, deeply felt women come up for air.
Paul posed for many works by Freud, and curator Deborah Robinson has included one of these portraits, ‘Head of a Woman’ (1986-7) on wall of its own. It’s a revelatory show full of clever decisions, which emphasise the printmaking process as something magical and underestimated in the story of art.
In the age of quick digital scrolling, prints demand slow looking; viewers will be rewarded with visions of intimacy in black and white, and every emotive line.
Free to visit, Studio Prints: Celebrating the Balakjian Collection runs until 12 April 2026 at The New Art Gallery Walsall, which also houses Freud masterpieces in its Garman Ryan Collection.
