C'est une tte, c'est une nuit, c'est un animal

Primrose Hill near Regent's Park in London was the artist's principal model for landscape from the mid 1950's. It was a subject to which he returned again and again. Robert Hughes reports the artist as saying: '.... in the early 50's there was talk of people painting a show in three months, or something like that, which seemed to me somehow to be superficial and illustrative and deedy and skimpy and just simply not what paintings require.... This was massive substance....this was the permanence. This was where the energy came from,. and it may be the thickness of the paint was something to do with this since my way of painting is not a question of choosing a uniform...I can now see why people thought there was something blatant and indigestible about [my early paintings]. But I can assure you that when I did them they simply felt to me to be true.' (R. Hughes, Frank Auerbach, London 1990, p. 177).