F R A N K  A U E R B A C H

c . F r a n k  A u e r b a c h

Oil on Board, 31.7 x 30.5 cm. (12 1/2 x 12 in.)
Sold for £860,000 at Bonhams, London
Sale 17799 - 20th Century British Art, 30 Jun 2010

More on E.O.W.

E.O.W. stands for Estella Olive West, an important sitter in the history of Auerbach's portraits.

In the late 1940s, Frank Auerbach was a 17-year-old novice actor as well as an aspiring artist cast in Peter Ustinov's first play House Of Regrets. Estella Olive West (b. 4 February 1916), the daughter of the philosopher O.S. Wauchope, was also in the play and it there where they first met. She was a feisty 32-year-old amateur actress, mother of three, and after her husband, Dr. Michael Walter West died in a freak accident in 1946 she scraped a living running a boarding house in Earl's Court.

Shortly afterwards, he moved into Stella's (as she was known as) boarding house and she was soon not only his lover but also his principal model. Romantically, they were together for on-off 23 years. He did marry Julia Wolstenholme in that time and Auerbach's only son Jake was born in 1958 but the marriage didn't survive the painter's ongoing, all-absorbing affair with his model.

The relationship was fraught and tempestuous but produced some of his greatest works. Head Of E.O.W.(1954-5), E.O.W. Nude (1953-54), Head of E.O.W. (1957), E.O.W. Half-Length Nude (1958), the 1960s where Auerbach worked with brighter cadmium and chromium paints and produced the works of E.O.W. on her Blue Eiderdown, and Head of E.O.W. III (1963-64), are generally considered to be keypoints in his whole career. In other words you can't think of Auerbach's work without considering E.O.W..

Stella West moved to much smaller house in Brentford in 1962. Auerbach was by now a successful artist and considered one of the most important of his generation. The 1960s saw work which rank amongst his best with the thickest impasto of his entire career.

The relationship came to an abrupt end in 1973. Even in the work E.O.W.'s position was becoming less important that that of the artist's wife Joan Yardley Mills (J.Y.M.).

Auerbach and his wife Julia reunited in 1976.

FRANK AUERBACH

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