Frank Auerbach

Marlborough Fine Art, London
Private Collection, London
Desmond Page, London
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in 2005

William Feaver, Frank Auerbach, New York 2009, p. 318, no. 711, illustraed in colour

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the overall tonality has less yellow undertones in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. Extremely close inspection reveals a minute and unobtrusive speck of surface loss to one of the white heavy impasto peaks towards the centre of the composition. No restoration is apparent when examined under ultraviolet light.
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Head of Julia is a wonderful example of Frank Auerbach’s obsessive dedication to his subjects. Among the select few he timelessly returned to was his former wife Julia, whom he met at the Royal College of Art in London, and whom he painted with the richest visual variety.

The present work is particularly striking in its bold and arresting style. The reduced palette of black and white creates a salient tension that is captured in the vigorous brushstrokes delineating Julia’s face. This powerful portrait is a real amalgam of the artist’s emotional and visual impressions, which is expressed through a dialogue between the artist’s inner world and that of his sitter. Reminiscent of woodcuts by expressionist Ludwig Kirchner, Auerbach’s painting is indeed one of refined elegance and intimacy, but also charged with the emotion that must have sparked between the artist and his former partner. Whilst Julia was one of Auerbach’s earliest models, their separation soon after their marriage in the late 1950s meant that he would only take up painting her again after their reunion in 1976.

Whereas many postwar painters have used a thick impasto as a means to an artistic end, Auerbach’s highly textured surfaces are not a deliberate effect. They are rather the result of a self-imposed criticism that leads him to a constant reworking of the painting, which creates the tactile quality of the finished works. Whilst this formal aspect of the present work offers a masterful cross-section of Frank Auerbach’s important contribution to postwar art history, it is also one of the most personal encounters one can have with the artist. Auerbach’s attempt to solve the visual complexity of a familiar face through the act of painting makes Head of Julia an astonishing portrait of our time.