Frank Auerbach

Private Collection (acquired from the artist)

Thence by descent to the present owner 

William Feaver, Frank Auerbach, New York 2009, p. 254, no. 161, illustrated in colour

Colour: The colour in the catalogue illustration is fairly accurate, although the white background is slightly warmer in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. There are 2 screw holes in the bottom two corners and one to the centre left of the top edge, which has been filled. The panel has been extended at the top edge by the artist, with some associated cracking to the paint surface. Close inspection reveals some unobtrusive drying cracks in places to the thicker pigment, most notably to the centre left of the composition and in the lower right quadrant. Further inspection reveals a loss to an impasto peak, approximately 25cm vertically up from the centre of the bottom edge. No restoration is apparent when examined under ultraviolet light.
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At at time when the artist's oeuvre is experiencing renewed appreciation – with the major retrospective of Frank Auerbach's work currently on view at Tate Britain – J.Y.M. in the Studio V should be considered a milestone in the artist's oeuvre. This painting pinpoints the concerted effort made by this artist in the early 1960s to adjust the course of his painterly production. If, in the previous decade, his style had been somewhat weighed down by incredibly thick tranches of paint, and a palette of heavy muddy browns and greys, then at the time of the present work, he was breaking free. In his own words: “I simply felt that the paintings that I had done up till then in earth colours were of a particular sort that might be said to be more haptic, less linear… I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life painting as though I’d been cast in a play, for a particular role so I wanted to stir the thing up” (Frank Auernach quoted in: Catherine Lampert, Frank Auerbach: Speaking and Painting, London 2015, p. 97). As such, in the present work we can discern a conscious linear emphasis, a striking primary palette, and a sense of vigorous bravura execution which is notably absent from earlier exercises in laboriousness. Auerbach has described this change with regard to the present work’s sister painting – J.Y.M. in the Studio IV – which is of notably similar appearance. He spoke of a “sense of this direction, the painting extending beyond the edge of the canvas and entering the room, something that somehow began to feel a bit more electric and alive and speedy than the painting I had done up to that point, which whatever else you say about them don’t look particularly speedy” (Ibid.). It is this level of dynamism and energy that marks the present work as such an exceptional portrait within Auerbach’s oeuvre.

A crucial component of this change in style in the early 1960s, was Auerbach’s burgeoning professional relationship with the present sitter. According to him, J.Y.M. “was brought into the world to be a model, she came and sat and it was not quite like anything else… She took poses that were natural to her, and then I sometimes suggested things and one would go on. It became like a central spine of what one was doing” (Ibid., p. 184). J.Y.M. is Juliet Yardley Mills – actually known as ‘Jim’ to the painter and other close friends – who first posed for Auerbach in 1956 while he was still teaching at the Sidcup College of Art. So fruitful was their working relationship, and so effective were the resultant portraits, that she continued to pose at least twice a week for more than forty years, arriving every Wednesday and Sunday until 1997. That she was a professional model was hugely important to Auerbach, as she could sustain awkward poses for four hours or more and develop ideas in an almost collaborative manner, suggesting her own postures and stances. However, this is not to suggest that her portraits were ever academic exercises, exacted so as to achieve a particular stylistic effect. As in all of his best work, including the present endeavour, the artist was seeking not to merely create a beautiful work, but rather to expose some deeper aspect of human truth: “To paint the same head over and over leads you to its unfamiliarity; eventually you get near the raw truth about it, just as people only blurt out the raw truth in the middle of a family quarrel” (Frank Auerbach quoted in: Robert Hughes, Frank Auerbach, London 1990, p. 19). J.Y.M. in the Studio V is a compelling work; bedecked in thick oleaginous paint, and remarkable for its leading role in the transformation of Auerbach’s style in the early 1960s.