Frank Auerbach: The Sitters

Frank Auerbach: The Sitters is the first dedicated overview of the artist’s portrait heads. Including over forty paintings and drawings, the exhibition explores the special connection between Auerbach and his ‘sitters’ – the dedicated models who have attended weekly sessions over months, years, and then decades.

A range of work made between 1956 and 2020 will be on display. Early portraits of his long-serving sitters ‘E.O.W.’ and ‘J.Y.M.’ will hang with recent self-portraits and a painting of his wife Julia, exhibited here for the first time. Paintings and drawings of all of Auerbach’s regular models will be shown, from Gerda Boehm and Helen Gillespie to Catherine Lampert, his son Jake, David Landau and William Feaver. These images quiver with animation, translating the artist’s raw visual sensations into forms that convey with unexpected specificity a sitter’s character and physical presence.

Shown together for the first time as part of the exhibition, Nicola Bensley’s significant photographs of the artist in his studio provide a rare insight into Auerbach’s world. The series Frank Auerbach: A Morning in the Studio opens a window onto the artist’s character and his paint-encrusted working environment.

Lead image: Nicola Bensley, Frank Auerbach in his studio (3), 2015