Frank Auerbach

Marlborough Fine Art, London
Sale, Sotheby's London, 5th April 1990, lot 638
Sale, Christie's London, 4th June 2004, lot 97
Offer Waterman & Co., London, where acquired by the present owner

London, Marlborough Fine Art, Frank Auerbach, January 1971, cat. no.21;
Sydney, Villiers, Frank Auerbach, April 1972, cat. no.6;
Milan, Galleria Bergamini, Frank Auerbach, October 1973, cat. no.9, illustrated;
London, Marlborough Fine Art, Frank Auerbach, May 1976, cat. no.18;
London, Hayward Gallery, Frank Auerbach, 4th May - 2nd July 1978, cat. no.86, illustrated, with Arts Council tour to Fruit Market Gallery, Edinburgh.

Robert Hughes, Frank Auerbach, Thames and Hudson, London, 1990, p.169, cat. no.130, illustrated pl.130;
William Feaver, Frank Auerbach, Rizzoli, New York, 2009, cat. no.274, illustrated p.268.

The present condition report has been prepared by Hamish Dewar, Fine Art Conservation, 13 & 14 Mason's Yard, Duke Street, St James's London, SW17 6BU. Unexamined out of frame. The painting is structurally sound and secure and the heavily impastoed and textured surface is stable. Paint surface: The paint surface has an even if rather glossy varnish layer and no retouchings are visible under ultraviolet light when viewed behind glass. Summary: The painting would therefore appear to be in good and stable condition. Please telephone the department on +44 (0) 207 293 6424 if you have any questions regarding the present lot.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

Portraiture has always been a key theme in Auerbach's career, although never in the accepted sense of the word. His repertoire of sitters is very small, being drawn from a circle of those close to him, and the appearance of certain of these mark distinct periods in his painting. The early images of friends such as his fellow painter Leon Kossoff or Stella West have become familiar to us too by the repetition of the rendering of their features, building images that capture the essentials of the sitter.

The earliest portrait images are immediately striking because of their sheer weight of paint, built up over many sessions (the 1955 Head of E.O.W. (Private Collection) was the result of almost three hundred sittings), but the present painting belongs to a group of works which marked a shift in Auerbach's manner of execution. Characterised by the use of a thick jagged black outline to delineate the head and features, the portraits of the late 1960s and early 1970s take on a stark, almost caricatured quality that isolates the distinctive features of each sitter. Auerbach's friend, Paula Eyles, has sat many times for Auerbach and is one of the few sitters whose image is thus available to us from across the artist's career. However, despite the wide varieties in handling, the consistency of the image of this sitter is quite remarkable, her distinctive features and character coming through each painting.