How do I draw gridlines using abline() that are behind the data?

Question

When I draw grid lines on a plot using abline() the grid lines are drawn over the data.

Is there a way to draw the abline() lines behind

Answer 1

The panel.first argument of plot() can take a list or vector of functions so you can put your abline() calls in there.

plot(1:4, panel.first = 
       c(abline(h = 1:4, lty = 2, col = 'grey') 
        ,abline(v = 1:4, lty = 2, col = 'grey')))