Elaine de Kooning produced "Jardin de Luxembourg I" in 1977 during her second residency at Tamarind Institute in Albuquerque. The work belongs to a suite of eight lithographs that grew out of an encounter the previous year with Jules Dalou’s monumental 1885 sculpture "Le Triomphe de Silène," located in Paris’s Jardin du Luxembourg. The sculpture depicts Silenus, the drunken companion and tutor of Dionysus, riding atop a donkey amid the chaos of a bacchanalian procession. De Kooning mistakenly identified the central figure as Bacchus, the Roman god of wine, and the works she subsequently created in response became known collectively as her Bacchus series.

The sculpture became an enduring source of inspiration for de Kooning, who revisited the subject in numerous paintings and drawings. Rather than focusing on its physical details, she was drawn to the energy of Dalou’s composition, using it as a vehicle for exploring movement, light, and gesture. The resulting works oscillate between representation and abstraction, a balance that remained central to de Kooning’s practice throughout her career.

Although closely associated with the first generation of Abstract Expressionism—de Kooning participated in the landmark Ninth Street Exhibition in 1951—she never abandoned figuration. Portraits, animals, landscapes, and historical imagery recur throughout her work, approached at times abstractly and at others expressionistically. The "Jardin de Luxembourg" lithographs exemplify this tendency: Dalou’s sculptural group remains recognizable, but its figures and surroundings are filtered through the gestural language for which de Kooning is celebrated.

The series also demonstrates the distinctly painterly approach de Kooning brought to lithography. Art historian Gustave von Groschwitz, who was present at Tamarind during the production of the prints, described watching the compositions develop as successive stones were printed, observing that the figures and setting were ultimately “stripped down to the essentials.” Through layered color and rapidly articulated marks, de Kooning transformed the solidity of Dalou’s monument into an image driven by visual sensation, atmosphere, and movement.