This is preparatory study for Freud's painting Large Interior W. 11 (after Watteau), of 1981-83. Freud produced the enormous painting using the daylight flooding in from the newly-installed skylight in his west London flat. Its composition derives from a small painting by the early-eighteenth century French artist, Jean-Antoine Watteau, showing a Pierrot teased by a group of flirting women.

Freud's painting is focused around Suzy Boyt's son Kai, who takes the place of Pierrot. Around him are the women in Freud's life: his daughter Bella playing the mandolin, Kai's mother to the right, holding a fan, and the painter, Celia Paul, on the left.

Freud wanted one of his grand-daughters to pose for the smaller figure in the foreground, though in the end he had to make do with a substitute, Star, the daughter of an acquaintance. The sitters rarely sat at the same time, and the need for preparatory studies resulted in the present work on paper.

The oil painting Large Interior W11 (after Watteau) (1981-83), was sold at auction in New York for the sum of $5,832,500 in 1998. The somber rendering of five figures in a bare London flat had been widely exhibited, including in the Metropolitan Museum's 1993-94 Freud show. The buyer of the painting was a private American collector, but it was subsequently included at Tate Britain's Freud retrospective in 2002, partly assuaging complaints in the UK that the work was part of the national heritage and should not have been allowed out of the country for sale.