Freud first experimented with etching in France, after World War II, when Graham Sutherland introduced him to the basics of the medium. Surviving in few examples, “Ill in Paris” from 1948 is considered one of Freud's greatest prints and a masterpiece of his early period. This etching was produced not in a studio or workshop but in a hotel room in Paris. Freud obtained the acid for the print from a local pharmacy, and the hotel washbasin served as a bath. It is a work of psychological intensity, whose subject is Kitty Epstein, the artist's first wife and the daughter of the British sculptor Jacob Epstein. Since 1982, Freud has resumed etching and has made it an important aspect of his graphic output.