The late and important artist Louise Bourgeois said that her art is a reworking, or working through, of a wonderful yet fraught childhood whose central experience involved an adored father who brought his mistress into his family household as his children's trusted tutor, and a mother who tolerated this arrangement. Young Louise, a second, favored child, felt betrayed on all sides. This seems to be the source of Bourgeois's fraught and sexualized imagery, which often references the body and memory, and vacillates between the tender and the sinister as in the present work Sainte Sebastienne.

As such, Bourgeois recast the classical subject of Saint Sebastian, famously martyred by arrows, as a woman. Her telling of the story dissects the headless and wooden body into a semi-abstract narrative, defying complete understanding yet reflecting a panoply of influences. Her aesthetic roots are deeply connected to Surrealism in her own autobiographical experiences, having learned from Magritte, de Chirico, Picasso and Klee.

The present work is one of Bourgeois' largest prints and most skillful drypoints. Her brilliant printmaking is evidenced by the careful wiping of the plate, the tedious lines etched in the grain of the wooden body and arrows and the overall bravura and power of such a large drypoint. The work is printed on Somerset Satin paper, measuring 47 x 37 inches and in a custom black rub frame with UV resistant plexi.