Pen and black ink, 25 by 18 cm (9 ¾ by 7 ins)

Provenance: James Kirkman (Lucian Freud's agent); from whom acquired by the previous owner, Raymond Hall, friend and model of Lucian Freud

A comparable but more finished drawing of a castor oil plant was exhibited at the Arts Council of Great Britain’s 1974 Lucian Freud retrospective (no.34). That work was dated by the artist to 1946. Some of Freud’s work in that year was painted on the Greek island of Poros, possibly including the present drawing. Freud’s drawings from the mid-1940s are now considered to be amongst the finest works on paper by any British artist working in the mid twentieth century.