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Lot Essay
"I haven't painted Mornington Crescent to ally myself with the Camden Town Group, but simply because I feel London is this raw thing... This extraordinary, marvellously unpainted city where whenever somebody tries to get something going they stop halfway through, and next to it something incongruous occurs... this higgledy-piggledy mess of a city." (F. Auerbach, in an interview with Judith Bumpus, in: Art and Artists, June 1986, p.27.)
Frank Auerbach has worked in the same studio in a street off Mornington Crescent, Camden, in North London since 1954 when he first took over the place from his friend and colleague Leon Kossoff. In the nearly fifty years he has worked there, the unique mixture of faded grandeur, dirt, mess, dilapidation and constant rebuilding that makes up the face of North London has pervaded and often come to determine much of the character of Auerbach's art. Primrose Hill Summer is one of a number of large and important paintings of the local landscape that Auerbach painted in the late 1960s. This highly-regarded series of landscape paintings reflects Auerbach's almost total immersion as an artist within his own locale and also marks the first full realisation of brilliant colour in his work.
In this bold and seemingly semi-abstract work, Auerbach has painted the natural forms of the landscape of Primrose Hill in such a way that they seem to have taken on the angularity and scaffolding-like structured chaos of his paintings of Mornington Crescent or Camden Town Station. This is entirely intentional. The Primrose Hill paintings of the late 1960s were all painted in Auerbach's studio from sketches and drawings that Auerbach had made on Primrose Hill. Auerbach's approach to the natural landscape was strongly underpinned by a structural sense of geometry, a geometry that both reflects the strongly urban location and isolation of the park around Primrose Hill as well as the innately cubist logic and strict geometry that can be found underpinning landscape works like the Palestine landscapes of Auerbach's teacher, David Bomberg. "I do like a clear expression if I can get it." Auerbach has said; "something that looks like a theorem. And unless paintings have that kind of wit - unless underlying them there is a clear geometrical structure - I don't actually feel they work." (In: R. Hughes, Frank Auerbach, London 1990, p.171.)
Working according to a regular plan encouraged this sense of structure in Auerbach's work. The rapid notation of his drawings encouraged this innate geometry to develop. The drawings Auerbach made on Primrose Hill acted as aide-memoires for the real work in the studio, they recalled "what it was actually like there that morning... what I see is what I was looking at when I did the drawings and it reminds me of it... I see the sunlight and the trees and the hills so I paint from these by looking at the drawing... I'm looking at black and white drawings and the lines signal colours to me." (F. Auerbach in conversation with Catharine Lampert, in: Frank Auerbach, exh. cat. London, Hayward Gallery, 1978, p.22.)
Primrose Hill Summer is actually a vibrant Primrose colour. Like Vincent van Gogh's revelatory paintings of the landscape around Arles, the heat of the summer seems to have here drenched both the sky and the land of this painting a deep rich yellow. The rich surface of the work and its sharp geometry seem to unite into a striking but fragile pictorial order with the angularity of the buildings reflected in the dramatic girder-like geometry of the clouds hanging in the sky above. This dramatic and febrile sense of order is pinned into a unity of form by the powerful sense of painterly surface in which each single brushstroke is crucial in the maintaining of a sense of composite order. As Robert Hughes has observed of Constable's landscapes, which he declared "became a talisman to Auerbach", the thick creamy surface of the oil paint is the arena in which the life of both the picture and the landscape is generated. Such is the nature of Auerbach's working methods, however, that in order to generate a sense of cohesive order in the surface of his landscapes all of the surface must be painted while the paint is still wet. This requires that the entire surface of the painting be painted in a continuous session, if any amendments are later required, the whole surface must again be reworked. Such conditions, Auerbach has commented, ensured that these landscapes were "a tremendous effort because... the way I work means putting up another whole image, which is... physically extremely strenuous, and I don't think I've ever finished a landscape without a six or seven hour bout of work. Whereas a person or a head is a single form and it can come about in a shorter period of time." (In: R. Hughes, op.cit., p.171.)
Frank Auerbach has worked in the same studio in a street off Mornington Crescent, Camden, in North London since 1954 when he first took over the place from his friend and colleague Leon Kossoff. In the nearly fifty years he has worked there, the unique mixture of faded grandeur, dirt, mess, dilapidation and constant rebuilding that makes up the face of North London has pervaded and often come to determine much of the character of Auerbach's art. Primrose Hill Summer is one of a number of large and important paintings of the local landscape that Auerbach painted in the late 1960s. This highly-regarded series of landscape paintings reflects Auerbach's almost total immersion as an artist within his own locale and also marks the first full realisation of brilliant colour in his work.
In this bold and seemingly semi-abstract work, Auerbach has painted the natural forms of the landscape of Primrose Hill in such a way that they seem to have taken on the angularity and scaffolding-like structured chaos of his paintings of Mornington Crescent or Camden Town Station. This is entirely intentional. The Primrose Hill paintings of the late 1960s were all painted in Auerbach's studio from sketches and drawings that Auerbach had made on Primrose Hill. Auerbach's approach to the natural landscape was strongly underpinned by a structural sense of geometry, a geometry that both reflects the strongly urban location and isolation of the park around Primrose Hill as well as the innately cubist logic and strict geometry that can be found underpinning landscape works like the Palestine landscapes of Auerbach's teacher, David Bomberg. "I do like a clear expression if I can get it." Auerbach has said; "something that looks like a theorem. And unless paintings have that kind of wit - unless underlying them there is a clear geometrical structure - I don't actually feel they work." (In: R. Hughes, Frank Auerbach, London 1990, p.171.)
Working according to a regular plan encouraged this sense of structure in Auerbach's work. The rapid notation of his drawings encouraged this innate geometry to develop. The drawings Auerbach made on Primrose Hill acted as aide-memoires for the real work in the studio, they recalled "what it was actually like there that morning... what I see is what I was looking at when I did the drawings and it reminds me of it... I see the sunlight and the trees and the hills so I paint from these by looking at the drawing... I'm looking at black and white drawings and the lines signal colours to me." (F. Auerbach in conversation with Catharine Lampert, in: Frank Auerbach, exh. cat. London, Hayward Gallery, 1978, p.22.)
Primrose Hill Summer is actually a vibrant Primrose colour. Like Vincent van Gogh's revelatory paintings of the landscape around Arles, the heat of the summer seems to have here drenched both the sky and the land of this painting a deep rich yellow. The rich surface of the work and its sharp geometry seem to unite into a striking but fragile pictorial order with the angularity of the buildings reflected in the dramatic girder-like geometry of the clouds hanging in the sky above. This dramatic and febrile sense of order is pinned into a unity of form by the powerful sense of painterly surface in which each single brushstroke is crucial in the maintaining of a sense of composite order. As Robert Hughes has observed of Constable's landscapes, which he declared "became a talisman to Auerbach", the thick creamy surface of the oil paint is the arena in which the life of both the picture and the landscape is generated. Such is the nature of Auerbach's working methods, however, that in order to generate a sense of cohesive order in the surface of his landscapes all of the surface must be painted while the paint is still wet. This requires that the entire surface of the painting be painted in a continuous session, if any amendments are later required, the whole surface must again be reworked. Such conditions, Auerbach has commented, ensured that these landscapes were "a tremendous effort because... the way I work means putting up another whole image, which is... physically extremely strenuous, and I don't think I've ever finished a landscape without a six or seven hour bout of work. Whereas a person or a head is a single form and it can come about in a shorter period of time." (In: R. Hughes, op.cit., p.171.)