Lot Essay
"I hate leaving my studio, I hate leaving (Camden Town), I hate leaving London." Hardly surprising then that Auerbach has been identified as the inheritor of Sickert's title: "the emblematic artist of Camden Town". Wendy Baron traces a direct line from Sickert to Auerbach through David Bomberg: "In Frank Auerbach's work, the connections are both artistic and personal. The intermediary presence of David Bomberg, as student of Sickert and teacher of Auerbach, provides an unbroken chain in the vivid and laborious realisation of the landscape of Camden Town as both district and psychological terrain." Three cityscapes in that borough have been pinpointed by Robert Hugues in his book Frank Auerbach as dominating Auerbach's later works: the park at Primrose Hill; the corner of Camden High Street and Mornington Crescent; and the entrance to his own studio. If the subject matter of Mornington Crescent bedsits and windblown London street scenes refers back to Sickert, the style of the paintwork is at least partly derived from Bomberg. The broad sweeping brushstrokes are reminiscent of Summer Flowers of 1943, while the colours of Behind Camden Town Station recall those of Sunset, Ronda, Andalucia of 1935.
Auerbach's early style was unsuited to outdoor motifs for reasons both practical and artistic. He could not paint outside, because he was unable to buy oil paints in any other colours than the cheapest - white, black and yellowish brown - in the quantities he required for landscape scenes. Furthermore, he frequently took years to finish a picture and obviously could not paint from life in the outdoors under these circumstances. His first decades as an artist were concentrated on the human form, particularly that of the few women (E. O. W. and J. Y. M.) who had the patience to sit for him for hours only to see the work he had done routinely destroyed at the next sitting. The development of a style which relied more on preparatory drawing from life and transformation in the studio resulted from an increased love of linear structure embedded in a thick, granular surface of paint. It is this that pointed Auerbach towards painting landscapes rather than figures. A union of Mondrian and Giacometti is the result which is clearly decipherable in Behind Camden Town Station.
In this painting of 1965, the grid imposed on the canvas is primarily black, but supported by thick lines of red and white which fix the image. The texture of the canvas, acting in concert with the grid overlaying it, reinforces the monumental nature of the image as the artist himself acknowledges: "the massive substance... the permanence. This was where the energy came from, and it may be the thickness of the paint has something to do with it." Hughes claims that all Auerbach's talent tends towards "stillness and definition". The two overpowering characteristics of Behind Camden Town Station - the linearity and the overloading of the surface of the canvas - both serve to justify his interpretation of Auerbach's talent.
Auerbach's early style was unsuited to outdoor motifs for reasons both practical and artistic. He could not paint outside, because he was unable to buy oil paints in any other colours than the cheapest - white, black and yellowish brown - in the quantities he required for landscape scenes. Furthermore, he frequently took years to finish a picture and obviously could not paint from life in the outdoors under these circumstances. His first decades as an artist were concentrated on the human form, particularly that of the few women (E. O. W. and J. Y. M.) who had the patience to sit for him for hours only to see the work he had done routinely destroyed at the next sitting. The development of a style which relied more on preparatory drawing from life and transformation in the studio resulted from an increased love of linear structure embedded in a thick, granular surface of paint. It is this that pointed Auerbach towards painting landscapes rather than figures. A union of Mondrian and Giacometti is the result which is clearly decipherable in Behind Camden Town Station.
In this painting of 1965, the grid imposed on the canvas is primarily black, but supported by thick lines of red and white which fix the image. The texture of the canvas, acting in concert with the grid overlaying it, reinforces the monumental nature of the image as the artist himself acknowledges: "the massive substance... the permanence. This was where the energy came from, and it may be the thickness of the paint has something to do with it." Hughes claims that all Auerbach's talent tends towards "stillness and definition". The two overpowering characteristics of Behind Camden Town Station - the linearity and the overloading of the surface of the canvas - both serve to justify his interpretation of Auerbach's talent.