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Lot Essay
Executed in 1976, Rimbaud II is the second of two remarkable portraits that Auerbach was inspired to paint for his friend and patron David Wilkie.
Wilkie, who had instigated Auerbach's first commisioned works - two paintings based on Titian's Tarquin and Lucrecia and Bacchus and Ariadne - originally asked Auerbach for a painting of Bernini's sculpture The Ecstasy of St Theresa in the Cornato Chapel in the St. Maria Vittoria in Rome. Auerbach commented on this idea that, "I think he envisaged a model posing on a sort of mound in the studio - this seemed impractical, and I saw no point in working from a photograph." (Auerbach quoted in Robert Hughes, Frank Auerbach, London 1989, p. 177.) As a result the project was initially shelved until Wilkie proposed the new idea that Auerbach paint a portrait of the legendary Symbolist poet Arthur Rimbaud.
Rimbaud was the precocious young poet, lover of Verlaine and bte noir of the Catholic establishment, who, after having written the most outstanding and provocative poems of his day, renounced poetry at the tender age of 18 and fled Europe for Africa where he became a gun-runner in Ethiopia and died at the age of 37. He would become the ultimate Romantic hero and symbol of youthful rebellion. When the idea of painting Rimbaud's portrait was first suggested, Auerbach immediately considered combining the iconic image of the young red-haired darling of the Symbolist movement with Bernini's iconic bastion of ecstatic Catholic mysticism. "Like the man in Pickwick Papers", Auerbach later wrote about this painting, "who wrote an article on Chinese metaphysics, by looking up first 'China' and then 'metaphysics' in the encyclopaedia, and then 'combining his information' .... the image, in a batty way, made a sort of sense."
Rimbaud II is a unique fusion in passionate fiery coloured orange of the image of the young poet and the golden altar in the Roman chapel commemorating St. Theresa's ecstatic visitation by an angel. A furious combination of heavy brushmarks and brilliant colour, Rimbaud II is a startling union of a scene of heavenly ecstasy and the visage of the man whose last epic poem was entitled "A Season in Hell".
Wilkie, who had instigated Auerbach's first commisioned works - two paintings based on Titian's Tarquin and Lucrecia and Bacchus and Ariadne - originally asked Auerbach for a painting of Bernini's sculpture The Ecstasy of St Theresa in the Cornato Chapel in the St. Maria Vittoria in Rome. Auerbach commented on this idea that, "I think he envisaged a model posing on a sort of mound in the studio - this seemed impractical, and I saw no point in working from a photograph." (Auerbach quoted in Robert Hughes, Frank Auerbach, London 1989, p. 177.) As a result the project was initially shelved until Wilkie proposed the new idea that Auerbach paint a portrait of the legendary Symbolist poet Arthur Rimbaud.
Rimbaud was the precocious young poet, lover of Verlaine and bte noir of the Catholic establishment, who, after having written the most outstanding and provocative poems of his day, renounced poetry at the tender age of 18 and fled Europe for Africa where he became a gun-runner in Ethiopia and died at the age of 37. He would become the ultimate Romantic hero and symbol of youthful rebellion. When the idea of painting Rimbaud's portrait was first suggested, Auerbach immediately considered combining the iconic image of the young red-haired darling of the Symbolist movement with Bernini's iconic bastion of ecstatic Catholic mysticism. "Like the man in Pickwick Papers", Auerbach later wrote about this painting, "who wrote an article on Chinese metaphysics, by looking up first 'China' and then 'metaphysics' in the encyclopaedia, and then 'combining his information' .... the image, in a batty way, made a sort of sense."
Rimbaud II is a unique fusion in passionate fiery coloured orange of the image of the young poet and the golden altar in the Roman chapel commemorating St. Theresa's ecstatic visitation by an angel. A furious combination of heavy brushmarks and brilliant colour, Rimbaud II is a startling union of a scene of heavenly ecstasy and the visage of the man whose last epic poem was entitled "A Season in Hell".