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Lot Essay
Kossoff was born in London and, like Auerbach, he attended Bomberg's classes at Borough Polytechnic. The present work is painted with thick impasto that typifies Kossoff's work. He works in a similar way to Auerbach through his technique of scraping off the oil paint at the end of a day and painting again over the residue that remains when he next returns to the work.
Kossoff has written about the process of painting: 'Every time the model sits everything has changed. You have changed, she has changed. The light has changed, the balance has changed. The directions you try to remember are no longer there and, whether working from the model or landscape drawings, everything has to be reconstructed daily many, many times [...] During all this time I'm working on other things. I might be particularly involved with my sitters or trying to finish with another subject, and in this way my painting life has changed over the years since I used to be more concerned with trying to finish one thing at a time. Now landscapes move from board to board, as do my paintings from life. It's my way of keeping the drawing in the painting alive, of being prepared to respond to the unexpected movement of the sitter or experiencing the landscape in an entirely new way. As time goes by the subject seems to take over my inner life. I begin to make extra associations and the need to finish becomes more urgent' (see exhibition catalogue, Leon Kossoff, British Pavilion, Venice Biennale XLVI, 1995, pp. 25-6).
Kossoff has written about the process of painting: 'Every time the model sits everything has changed. You have changed, she has changed. The light has changed, the balance has changed. The directions you try to remember are no longer there and, whether working from the model or landscape drawings, everything has to be reconstructed daily many, many times [...] During all this time I'm working on other things. I might be particularly involved with my sitters or trying to finish with another subject, and in this way my painting life has changed over the years since I used to be more concerned with trying to finish one thing at a time. Now landscapes move from board to board, as do my paintings from life. It's my way of keeping the drawing in the painting alive, of being prepared to respond to the unexpected movement of the sitter or experiencing the landscape in an entirely new way. As time goes by the subject seems to take over my inner life. I begin to make extra associations and the need to finish becomes more urgent' (see exhibition catalogue, Leon Kossoff, British Pavilion, Venice Biennale XLVI, 1995, pp. 25-6).