Head of E.O.W. III

Frank Auerbach 1931

Summary

Painted in heavy oil impasto on board using flake white with highlights of cadmium red, cobalt blue and yellows squeezed straight from the tube onto the paint surface.

Display Label

Frank Auerbach 17 May - 10 August 2014 Frank Auerbach is the most important living painter from a group of artists who came to be thought of as The School of London. Auerbach’s art is built on the rugged draughtsmanship of his charcoal drawings and the sheer physicality of his painting. He uses vast quantities of paint which he trowels onto boards and then applies with large brushes wielded with decisive speed and energy. His early canvases appear almost sculpted in paint but they are still informed by drawing and are modelled in tones to create the effect of light falling on forms. Auerbach has always confined himself to a limited range of subjects: London landscapes and portraits of close friends. He has painted the same isolated figures in his Camden studio over and over again subtly recording their aging down the years. His favoured models have included EOW, Julia and J.Y.M. In the 1950s he was inspired by the dark spaces of the building sites of bombed-out London which he modelled in heavy lines and brooding earth tones. From the early 1960s he began to experiment with brighter colours in his landscapes of Primrose Hill north of Regent’s Park and in his views of the streets in and around Camden. This new-found freedom he then applied to his portraits. In paintings like Head of EOW III paint is joyfully squeezed directly from the tube in drawn lines. From the 1980s to the present Auerbach has worked endlessly at the same images through repeated charcoal or felt pen sketches and then by painting and repainting the image. The gloom and weight of his early work has given way to a delight in colour and a sense of light and movement. The works in the exhibition are from a larger group that has been accepted from the estate of Lucian Freud in lieu of inheritance tax that was due by the estate on the artist’s death in 2011. Freud was a close and long-standing friend of Auerbach and was a great admirer of his painting and draughtsmanship. Freud acquired these works over many years and they were hung around his house in London. The full group of works is the largest ever Acceptance in Lieu case and after this selected showing at Manchester Art Gallery all the works will be exhibited at Tate Britain. Acceptance in Lieu was established in 1912 as a means of paying inheritance tax by transferring cultural works to the nation and it has been a very important means for collections to acquire significant works of art. After the exhibition at Tate Britain the works will be allocated by Arts Council England on behalf of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and H.M. Revenue and Customs to museums and galleries across the UK and Northern Ireland.