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Lot Essay
Born in Berlin, Auerbach came to London in 1947 and his work sits within the lineage of British painting that runs from Sickert through Bomberg to Auerbach. Initially taking art classes at the Hampstead Garden Suburb Institute, Auerbach then went to Borough Polytechnic where his classes included some taught by Bomberg.
Auerbach commented in a conversation with Catherine Lampert, 'Then, I was 17 and I went to Bomberg's class where he said to me 'Oh so you think I'm a silly old idiot don't you?', or something like that, and I said in my 17-year-old arrogance, 'Yes I do'. He was delighted and I didn't realise that I had met with probably the most original, stubborn, radical intelligence that was to be found in art schools. It wasn't his phrases that made sense to me because my relationship to teaching was one of rejection and rebellion. I mean, by itself and whether I was consciously aware of it or not, the status of the disciple seemed to me to be a totally futile one. Bomberg had a phrase about the spirit of mass, something to do with a very particular and specific expression of a particular conformation of matter. But at the time this seemed rhetorical to me, and it was his practical instruction rather than his maxims which registered' (see exhibition catalogue, Frank Auerbach, London, Arts Council, Hayward Gallery, 1978, p. 20).
Painted in 1984, the present work depicts Catherine Lampert who began to sit for Auerbach in 1978, when she worked on the Hayward Gallery retrospective exhibition of that year. The paint surface is pinned down with an armature of thick brushstrokes of black paint. Auerbach's working method of painting, scraping down the surface at the end of the day and returning to paint again the sitter in the same pose on the same canvas the next day requires a huge amount of dedication from his sitters. Isabel Carlisle notes that Head of E.O.W., 1955 (private collection) took two years to paint and entailed three hundred sittings to complete (see exhibition catalogue, Frank Auerbach: Paintings and Drawings 1954-2001, London, Royal Academy, 2001, p. 62). Describing the experience of sitting for Auerbach in his studio, Catherine Lampert comments, 'Auerbach moves noisily around the room, then rushes up, and like darts or writing on the blackboard fairly brutally tries the next throw or cancels the previous one. He is continuously active, drawing in the air, talking to himself, hardly pausing' (see exhibition catalogue, Frank Auerbach, Venice Biennale XLII, 1986, p. 8).
Auerbach commented in a conversation with Catherine Lampert, 'Then, I was 17 and I went to Bomberg's class where he said to me 'Oh so you think I'm a silly old idiot don't you?', or something like that, and I said in my 17-year-old arrogance, 'Yes I do'. He was delighted and I didn't realise that I had met with probably the most original, stubborn, radical intelligence that was to be found in art schools. It wasn't his phrases that made sense to me because my relationship to teaching was one of rejection and rebellion. I mean, by itself and whether I was consciously aware of it or not, the status of the disciple seemed to me to be a totally futile one. Bomberg had a phrase about the spirit of mass, something to do with a very particular and specific expression of a particular conformation of matter. But at the time this seemed rhetorical to me, and it was his practical instruction rather than his maxims which registered' (see exhibition catalogue, Frank Auerbach, London, Arts Council, Hayward Gallery, 1978, p. 20).
Painted in 1984, the present work depicts Catherine Lampert who began to sit for Auerbach in 1978, when she worked on the Hayward Gallery retrospective exhibition of that year. The paint surface is pinned down with an armature of thick brushstrokes of black paint. Auerbach's working method of painting, scraping down the surface at the end of the day and returning to paint again the sitter in the same pose on the same canvas the next day requires a huge amount of dedication from his sitters. Isabel Carlisle notes that Head of E.O.W., 1955 (private collection) took two years to paint and entailed three hundred sittings to complete (see exhibition catalogue, Frank Auerbach: Paintings and Drawings 1954-2001, London, Royal Academy, 2001, p. 62). Describing the experience of sitting for Auerbach in his studio, Catherine Lampert comments, 'Auerbach moves noisily around the room, then rushes up, and like darts or writing on the blackboard fairly brutally tries the next throw or cancels the previous one. He is continuously active, drawing in the air, talking to himself, hardly pausing' (see exhibition catalogue, Frank Auerbach, Venice Biennale XLII, 1986, p. 8).