Frank Auerbach

by Catherine Lampert

  Bonaventura, Paul, ‘Een Benadering van Frank Auerbach’, Metropolis M, 2, Summer 1986

  Bumpus, Judith, ‘Frank Auerbach’, Art & Artists, June 1986

  Cork, Richard, ‘Frank Auerbach: An interview by Richard Cork’, Art & Design, 4:9/10, 1988

  —, ‘Two old masters’, interview with Lucian Freud and Frank Auerbach, The Times, 3 May 2006

  —, Face To Face: Interviews with Artists, Tate, London, 2015

  Elwes, Jay, ‘Interview: Frank Auerbach’, Prospect, 197, August 2012

  Fernand, Deirdre, ‘Alone is where his art is’, Sunday Times Magazine, 6 December 2009

  Frank Auerbach: Paintings and Drawings relating to Titian [commissioned by David Wilkie], exh. cat., University of Essex, Colchester, 1973

  ‘Frank Auerbach’, Bamboo, 14, Autumn 1987

  ‘Frank Auerbach, Der Endpunkt ist der Punkt, an dem das Problem gelöst zu sein scheint’, a conversation with Mona Körte and Judith Elisabeth Weiss, Kunstforum, 216, July–August 2012

  Gayford, Martin, ‘A master at seventy’, Daily Telegraph, 1 September 2001

  —, ‘Auerbach’s London’, Apollo, October 2009 Greig, Geordie, ‘Paint or die, meeting Frank Auerbach’, Modern Painters, 11:3, Autumn 1998

  —, ‘Hidden talent’, Times Magazine, 12 December 1998

  —, ‘The constant painter’, London Evening Standard, 10 September 2009

  Lambirth, Andrew, ‘Living in the moment’, Spectator, 24 October 2009, 311:9452

  Lampert, Catherine, ‘A conversation with Frank Auerbach’, Frank Auerbach, exh. cat., Arts Council, London, 1978

  —, ‘Frank Auerbach in his own words’, Telegraph, 3 November 2012

  Peppiatt, Michael, ‘Frank Auerbach: Going against the grain’, Art International, Autumn 1987

  —, ‘Frank Auerbach’, Tate, 14, Spring 1998

  —, ‘Frank Auerbach, Camden Town London 1998’, ‘Frank Auerbach, Camden Town London 1999’, Interviews with Artists 1966–2012, New Haven and London, 2012

  Rothschild, Hannah, ‘Man of many layers’, Telegraph Magazine, 28 September 2013

  Tusa, John, John Tusa on Creativity: Interviews Exploring the Process, London, 2003

  Von Drateln, Doris, ‘Malen ist nicht wie Husten oder Spucken’, Kunstforum, 87, January/February 1987

  Wullschlager, Jackie, ‘Lunch with the FT: Frank Auerbach’, Financial Times, 6–7 October 2012

  TV and Radio

  Front Row, ‘Raw Truth–Auerbach–Rembrandt’, BBC Radio 4, 4 October 2013

  The John Tusa Interviews, ‘Frank Auerbach’, BBC Radio 3, 7 October 2001

  In Pursuit of Change, ‘Frank Auerbach in conversation with Richard Cork’, BBC Radio 3, 18 November 1985

  Omnibus, ‘Frank Auerbach: To the Studio’, Hannah Rothschild and Jake Auerbach Film Productions, BBC 2, 10 November 2001

  South Bank Show, ‘Frank Auerbach’, directed by Tony Cash, London Weekend Television, 20 May 1978

  CHRONOLOGY

  1931

  On 29 April Frank Helmut Auerbach is born in Berlin, son of Max Auerbach and Charlotte Nora Borchardt.

  1939

  On 4 April, Auerbach, sponsored by the writer Iris Origo, sets sail from Hamburg for school in England. He attends Bunce Court at Lenham, near Faversham in Kent, a school founded by Anna Essinger, a German Jewish-Quaker. She had relocated her school from southern Germany to England in 1933. Many of the children and teachers are Jewish refugees. The school is evacuated to Wem, Shropshire, in the period 1940–45.

  1943

  In March Auerbach’s parents are sent to Auschwitz, where they subsequently die.

  1947

  Auerbach leaves school with a Higher School Certificate and on 16 July receives a document of naturalization. In the autumn he attends art classes at the Hampstead Garden Suburb Institute. He begins (into 1948) to act in small parts in plays with the International Theatre Group, at the Torch Theatre, the 20th Century Theatre and the Tavistock Theatre.

  1948

  In January Auerbach enrolls at the Borough Polytechnic Institute in south London for two terms. One of his tutors is David Bomberg. During Frank Marcus’s production of House of Regrets by Peter Ustinov at the Torch Theatre he meets Estella Olive West (E.O.W.). In September he begins a National Diploma in Design at St Martin’s School of Art (to 1952), where he later befriends Leon Kossoff. He continues to attend evening classes given by Bomberg until 1953.

  1952

  Auerbach does not pass his army medical and is exempted from National Service. He enters the Royal College of Art (graduating in 1955 with a silver medal and first-class honours). In September he experiences a ‘breakthrough’, realizing Summer Building Site and the first resolved portrait of E.O.W., a nude figure.

  1954

  In March Auerbach takes over the studio near Mornington Crescent, Camden Town, previously rented by Leon Kossoff. He begins painting Primrose Hill.

  1956

  One-person exhibition at the Beaux Arts Gallery in January. Auerbach continues to exhibit there through 1963, the year before Helen Lessore’s gallery closes. Teaches at various art colleges, including Sidcup, Bromley, Camberwell, Ealing and the Slade (until 1968). J.Y.M. (Julia Yardley Mills) begins posing in 1957.

  1958

  Marries Julia Wolstenholme, a painter who also studied at the Royal College. Their son Jacob is born in March.

  1961

  Auerbach paints two versions of Rembrandt’s Deposition in the National Gallery. Paintings of his neighbourhood begin with the Carreras cigarette factory and extend to the streets behind and around the Underground stations, Camden Town and Mornington Crescent.

  1965

  David Wilkie, an insurance clerk in the City, commissions Auerbach to paint a work based on Titian, and this relationship results in other works. The Wilkie works are later donated to the Tate. In February Auerbach has his first exhibition at Marlborough Fine Art, London. The gallery continues to represent and show his work, also at its associated galleries in Europe and New York (at the latter from 1969).

  1978

  The Arts Council of Great Britain organizes a retrospective that opens at the Hayward Gallery, London, and tours to the Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh. The catalogue includes a foreword by Leon Kossoff and a conversation between Auerbach and Catherine Lampert, the exhibition’s organizer.

  1981

  ‘A New Spirit in Painting’, a widely discussed review of figurative painting selected by Norman Rosenthal, Nicholas Serota and Christos M. Joachimides opens at the Royal Academy of Arts (five paintings by Auerbach are included).

  1986

  Auerbach represents Britain at the XLII Venice Biennale, June–September, where he shares the Golden Lion prize with Sigmar Polke. The exhibition travels to the Kunstverein, Hamburg, the Museum Folkwang, Essen, and the newly opened Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, in 1987.

  1987

  Begins working in a studio in Finsbury Park for part of each week.

  1989

  Exhibition of recent work at the Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh in Amsterdam.

  1990

  Publication of Robert Hughes’s monograph Frank Auerbach (Thames & Hudson). Marlborough Graphics shows ‘The Complete Etchings 1954–1990’.

  1990–91

  A focus exhibition around the version of To the Studios acquired by the Saint Louis Art Museum is shown in the museum and with the addition of twelve paintings at the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven.

  1995

  The exhibition ‘Frank Auerbach and the National Gallery: Working after the Masters’, July–September, is built around the drawings he made over a thirty-year period from paintings in the collection, together with his versions of paintings by Rembrandt, Rubens and Titian.

  2000

  A room of Auerbach’s paintings owned by the Tate is presented in the first display at Tate Modern in May. Auerbach is included in the National Gallery’s ‘Encounters’, one of the millennium exhibitions.
>
  2001

  Retrospective in the main galleries of the Royal Academy of Arts, September–December; the catalogue has essays by Norman Rosenthal and Catherine Lampert, the curator. Frank Auerbach: To the Studio, the first film about the artist, directed by Hannah Rothschild and produced by her and Jake Auerbach, is built around interviews with the regular sitters going back to E.O.W. and J.Y.M., and the current ones: Julia Auerbach, Jake Auerbach Catherine Lampert, David Landau and Ruth Bromberg (until 2008). William Feaver begins sitting in 2003.

  2006–07

  Shows with Lucian Freud at the Victoria & Albert Museum in 2006. The artist’s etchings and drypoints are shown at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, 2007; the museum owns a complete set thanks to donations by Ruth Bromberg, James Kirkman and the artist.

  2009

  ‘Frank Auerbach: London Building Sites, 1952–62’ opens at the Courtauld Gallery; the catalogue is edited by Barnaby Wright. Frank Auerbach by William Feaver is published (Rizzoli) with a complete catalogue of images compiled by Kate Austin.

  2013–14

  Six paintings by Auerbach are shown with several Rembrandts at Ordovas, London, and then at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, in the Dutch Gallery of Honour. By now, Auerbach’s work is in British public collections and ones in Australia, Brazil, Denmark, France, Israel, Mexico, Norway, Portugal, South Africa, Spain and USA, and in private collections worldwide.

  2014

  The works by Auerbach that were owned by Lucian Freud and acquired for the nation through the Acceptance in Lieu scheme are shown at Manchester City Art Gallery and Tate Britain.

  2015

  Major exhibition, the first six galleries selected by the artist, the last two by Catherine Lampert, opens in June at the Kunstmuseum, Bonn, and at Tate Britain in October.

  LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

  Measurements are given in centimetres, followed by inches, height before width. Marlborough = Marlborough Fine Art, London, a = above, b = below.

  Page numbers refer to 2015 print edition

  Frontispiece: Head of Julia 1981. Charcoal and chalk on paper, 77.5 × 57.8 (30½ × 22¾). Private collection. Courtesy Marlborough

  p. 7 Frank Auerbach seated in his studio, 1982. Photo Marc Trivier. © Marc Trivier

  p. 8 Head of Catherine Lampert, 1985.

  Charcoal and chalk on paper, 76.2 × 76.2 (30 × 30). Private collection. Courtesy Marlborough

  p. 10 Frank drawing, Berlin, c. 1935. Courtesy Julia Auerbach

  p. 12 Frank with his mother, Charlotte, Berlin, c. 1931. Courtesy Julia Auerbach

  p. 13 Max Auerbach, the artist’s father, Berlin, c. 1932. Courtesy Julia Auerbach

  p. 17 Frank at Bunce Court, 1939. Courtesy Marlborough

  p. 26 Frank at the LCC ‘Open-Air Exhibition’, Embankment Gardens, London, July 1948. Semi-matte bromide print, 20.4 × 20.5 (8 × 8⅛). Courtesy Marlborough. © Estate of Daniel Farson

  p. 33 Artist’s copy of Picasso. Fifty Years of His Art by Alfred H. Barr, Jr. (Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1946), page 223. Pablo Picasso, Girl with Dark Hair (Portrait of Dora Maar), 1939. Oil on wood, 60.3 × 45.4 (23¾ × 17⅞). Private collection. © Succession Picasso/DACS, London 2015

  p. 34 Portrait of Leon Kossoff, 1950. Charcoal and chalk on paper, 76.2 × 55.9 (30 × 22). Private collection. Courtesy Marlborough

  p. 36 Three Blind Men, 1951. Oil on paper, 43.8 × 62.9 (17¼ × 24¾). Private collection. Courtesy Marlborough

  p. 39 E.O.W. Nude, 1952. Oil on canvas, 76.2 × 50.8 (30 × 20). Private collection. Courtesy Marlborough

  p. 40 Summer Building Site, 1952. Oil on board, 76.2 × 106.7 (30 × 42). Private collection. Courtesy Marlborough

  p. 43 Seated Nude, 1955. Charcoal and crayon on paper, 55.8 × 38.7 (22 × 15¼). Private collection. Courtesy Marlborough

  p. 44 Building Site, Earl’s Court Road, Winter, 1953. Oil on hardboard, 91.4 × 123.2 (36 × 48½). Private collection. Courtesy Marlborough

  pp. 48–49 Study for fairground mural, summer 1949, for the children’s nursery in Earl’s Court Road. Courtesy Sarah and Julia West

  p. 51 E.O.W., Half-length Nude, 1958. Oil on board, 76.2 × 50.8 (30 × 20). Private collection. Courtesy Marlborough

  p. 52 Head of E.O.W., 1955. Oil on board, 78.7 × 66 (31 × 26). Arts Council England. Accepted by H.M. Government in lieu of Inheritance Tax and awaiting permanent allocation. Courtesy Marlborough

  p. 54 Primrose Hill, Autumn Morning, 1968. Oil on board, 121.9 × 121.9 (48 × 48). Private collection. Courtesy Marlborough p. 57 Study after Turner’s The Parting of Hero and Leander, c. 1953. Pencil on paper, 25.1 × 34.9 (9⅞ × 13¾). Private collection. Courtesy Marlborough

  p. 58a Study for Shell Building Site from the Festival Hall, c. 1958–59. Pencil on paper, 19 × 22 (7½ × 8⅝). Arts Council England. Accepted by H.M. Government in lieu of Inheritance Tax and awaiting permanent allocation. Courtesy Marlborough

  p. 58b Shell Building Site from the Festival Hall, 1959. Oil on board, 37.1 × 42.2 (14⅝ × 16⅝). Private collection. Courtesy Marlborough

  p. 61 Primrose Hill, 1954–55. Oil on board, 86.4 × 116.8 (34 × 46). Private collection. Courtesy Marlborough

  p. 64 Frank in the studio with portraits of Leon Kossoff made in 1954, c. 1955. Courtesy Marlborough

  p. 65 Head of Leon Kossoff, 1954. Oil on board, 41.3 × 31.7 (16¼ × 12½). Private collection. Courtesy Marlborough

  p. 70 Rebuilding the Empire Cinema, Leicester Square, 1962. Oil on board, 152.4 × 152.4 (60 × 60). Arts Council England.

  Accepted by H.M. Government in lieu of Inheritance Tax and awaiting permanent allocation. Courtesy Marlborough

  p. 81 Frank, his cousin Marcel Reich-Ranicki and Marcel's son Andrew Ranicki in Hampstead, 1970. Photo Gerda Boehm. © Andrew Ranicki

  p. 82 Study after Deposition by Rembrandt II, 1961. Oil on board, 180.3 × 121.9 (71 × 48). Private collection. Courtesy Marlborough

  p. 84 Self-Portrait, 1958. Charcoal and chalk on paper, 76.8 × 56.5 (30¼ × 22¼). Private collection. Courtesy Marlborough

  p. 88 Head of Julia, 1960. Charcoal and chalk on paper, 76.2 × 55.9 (30 × 22). Private collection. Courtesy Marlborough

  p. 89 Julia Auerbach, c. 1960. Photo David Cripps. © David Cripps

  p. 90 Seated Nude, 1960. Charcoal and chalk on paper, 78.1 × 57.1 (30¾ × 22½). Private collection. Courtesy Marlborough

  p. 91 Head of E.O.W. III, 1960. Charcoal and chalk on paper, 76.2 × 55.9 (30 × 22). Private collection. Courtesy Marlborough

  p. 95 Chaïm Soutine, Landscape at Céret, c. 1920–21. Oil on canvas, 55.9 × 83.8 (22 × 33). Tate, London

  p. 96 Willem de Kooning, Woman I, 1950–52. Oil on canvas, 192.7 × 147.3 (75⅞ × 58). Museum of Modern Art, New York. © The Willem de Kooning Foundation, New York/ARS, NY and DACS, London 2015

  p. 98 J.Y.M. in the Studio IV, 1964. Oil on board, 30.5 × 15.2 (12 × 6). Private collection. Courtesy Marlborough

  p. 99 Studio with Figure on Bed I, 1966. Oil on canvas, 71.1 × 91.8 (28 × 36⅛). Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo, INBA – Conaculta, Mexico

  p. 101 Head of Gerda Boehm, 1967. Oil on canvas, 61 × 61 (24 × 24). Private collection. Courtesy Marlborough

  p. 102 Frank Auerbach in the studio with canvas to the wall, ‘at a banal stage’, 1963. Photo Snowdon. © Armstrong-Jones/Used by permission of Trunk Archive

  p. 107 E.O.W. on her Blue Eiderdown, 1962–64. Oil on board, 37.6 × 67.3 (14¾ × 26½). Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Gift of Mr and Mrs Marvin Hime

  p. 110 Frank and Stella in the garden of 33 Somerset Road, Brentford, c. 1962. Courtesy Sarah West

  p. 111 E.O.W., S.A.W. and J.J.W. in the Garden I, 1963. Oil on board, 190.5 × 152.4 (75 × 60). Private collection. Courtesy Marlborough

  p. 112a & b Two studies for The Sitting Room, 1964 (Tate). Pencil on paper, both 21.5 × 21 (8½ × 8¼). Private collection. Courtesy Marlborough

  p. 113 The Sitting Room, 1964–65. Oil on board, 127 × 127 (50 × 50). Private collection. Cou
rtesy Marlborough

  p. 115 Head of E.O.W. II, 1964. Oil on board, 35.6 × 27.9 (14 × 11). Private collection. Photo © Mike Bruce

  p. 116 Head of E.O.W., 1972. Oil on board, 25.4 × 15.2 (10 × 6). Private collection. Courtesy Marlborough

  p. 118 Frank Auerbach in the Golden Lion pub, Dean Street, London, c. 1962. Photo John Deakin. The John Deakin Archive/ Getty Images

  p. 123 Francis Bacon, Double Portrait of Lucian Freud and Frank Auerbach, 1964. Oil on canvas, each panel 165 × 145 (65 × 57⅛). Moderna Museet, Stockholm. © The Estate of Francis Bacon. All rights reserved. DACS 2015

  p. 126 Gaumont Cinema, Camden Town, 1963. Oil on board, 88.9 × 146 (35 × 57½). Private collection. Courtesy Marlborough

  p. 131 Mornington Crescent with the Statue of Sickert’s Father-in-Law III, Summer Morning, 1966. Oil on board, 121.3 × 152.4 (47¾ × 60). Private collection. Courtesy Marlborough

  p. 132 Behind Camden Town Station, Autumn Evening, 1965. Oil on board, 88.9 × 139.7 (35 × 55). Private collection. Courtesy Marlborough

  p. 134 Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach, 1975–76. Oil on canvas, 40 × 26.5 (15¾ × 10½). Private collection. © The Lucian Freud Archive/ Bridgeman Images

  p. 136 Head of Bruce Bernard, 1975. Charcoal on paper 55.9 × 78.1 (22 × 30¾). Private collection. Courtesy Marlborough

  p. 138 Wheeler’s, Old Compton Street, Soho, 1963. From left, Timothy Behrens, Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon, Frank Auerbach and Michael Andrews. Photo John Deakin. Courtesy of Paul Rousseau at The John Deakin Archive, John Moores Collection/Getty Images

  p. 145 Study after Titian II, 1965. Oil on canvas, 67.3 × 62.2 (26½ × 24½). Tate, London. Presented by the Executors of the Estate of David Wilkie, 1993

  p. 146 Bacchus and Ariadne, 1971. Oil on board, 122.5 × 153 (48¼ × 60). Tate, London. Presented by the Executors of the Estate of David Wilkie 1993

  p. 149 Two drawings after Rubens’s Samson and Delilah, 1984. Pencil and felt-tip pen on paper, 25.3 × 27.5 (10 × 10⅞) and 25.2 × 28 (9⅞ × 11). National Gallery, London. Presented by James Kirkman, 2000 (H99 and H100). Photo The National Gallery, London. Courtesy Marlborough

  p. 151 Jacob, 1979–80. Oil on canvas, 91.4 × 81.3 (36 × 32). Private collection. Courtesy Marlborough