LAST CHANCE FOR AUERBACH

Frank Auerbach, Study after Titian I, Oil paint on board, 1965. Courtesy of Tate, London

The splendid Frank Auerbach show at Newlands House Gallery in Petworth, spanning 60 years of the Anglo-German artist’s remarkable career, closes on August 14.

The show, spread over 12 rooms of this elegant Georgian townhouse in West Sussex, consists more of drawings, etchings and sketches than fully realised oil paintings, of which nine are on display. But it has been intelligently curated by Maya Binkin, and it teaches you a good deal about the influences and modus operandi of the enigmatic, famously private painter. Look at the preparatory sketches he made of Titian paintings, on daily visits to the National Gallery, for example, and you start to comprehend the stepping-stones he crossed before creating his remarkable Study After Titian 1 and 2, placed alongside.  

And when you do come face to face with one of his impasto creations - a portrait of his wife, for example, or of his muse ‘EOW’, or an imagined head of Rimbaud, - you find yourself giving it the sort of scrutiny it deserves. An Auerbach painting warrants being inspected from different distances, and angles, revealing fresh secrets from each viewpoint. Faces and forms appear and disappear in the artful churn of contour and colour. These are complex, multi-layered pieces that sometimes took him years to paint; they must have taken a fair while to dry, too.

If you can’t get to Petworth in time, there are plenty of opportunity to scrutinise the work of Britain’s greatest living artist* at British Art Fair. Auerbach, as ever, is represented by several galleries, including Castlegate House, James Hyam, Julian Page, Piano Nobile, and Tanya Baxter.

*Discuss.