FRANK AUERBACH

(B. 1931)

Portrait of Debbie Ratcliff III
1984

Footnotes

Provenance
Marlborough Fine Art Ltd., London (no. 35238.6)
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in 1984

Exhibited
Venice, XLII Biennale di Venezia, British Pavilion, Frank Auerbach: Paintings and Drawings 1977-1985, 1986, p. 50, no. 32, illustrated in colour
Hamburg, Kunstverein; Essen, Museum Folkwang, Frank Auerbach, 1986-1987, p. 72, no. 37, illustrated in colour
Madrid, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Frank Auerbach: Retrospectiva, 1954-1985, 1987, p. 68, no. 37, illustrated in colour

Literature
Robert Hughes, Frank Auerbach, London 1990, p. 208, no. 215, illustrated in black and white
William Feaver, Frank Auerbach, New York 2009, p. 294, no. 505, illustrated in colour



Frank Auerbach's Portrait of Debbie Ratcliff III is a masterly and empathetic painting which formed the third of a trio of portraits of his model and muse Debbie Ratcliff that were first unveiled at the 42nd Venice Biennale in 1986, where Auerbach was awarded the Golden Lion, sharing the prestigious prize with Sigmar Polke. Hailed as one of the most influential painters of the 20th century, Frank Auerbach is celebrated for his expressionistic portraits and cityscapes characterised by his distinctive and gestural impasto technique.
Auerbach was born in Berlin in 1931. Arriving in England as a Jewish refugee in 1939, he attended St Martin's School of Art, London, and studied with David Bomberg in night classes at Borough Polytechnic, before culminating his final studies at the Royal College of Art. His first exhibition was held at London's Beaux Arts Gallery in 1956. Initially Auerbach was criticised for his thick application of paint, but found support from the critic David Sylvester, who identified the exhibition as one of the most exciting and impressive debut solo-shows by an English painter since Francis Bacon. By the early 1960s, Auerbach had established himself among the ranks of what would later become known as the School of London, a group that included Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon.

Bacon shared much of Auerbach's sensibility: the two artists favoured painterly intuition over carefully studied precision, viewing painting as a means of pinning down human expression. However, despite his affiliation with the School of London artists and comparisons to Bacon, Auerbach also sought to engage in the explicit dialogue with the art historical canon, and cites numerous old and modern masters as influences, including Rembrandt, Rubens, Titian, Constable and Picasso. Auerbach would continue to exhibit regularly at the Beaux Arts Gallery until 1963, before joining Marlborough Gallery in 1965. Today his works are amongst the most internationally collected and desirable amongst all living artists.

Beautifully positioned within the square canvas, Debbie Ratcliff sits composed and elegant, her angular shoulders asymmetrically filling the composition. Auerbach employs rich swathes of crimson, green hues, and vibrant yellows to build his portrait. There is a meditative, emotional quality to his paint; Auerbach's heavy impasto can take months to build up and scrape back, he paints slowly and methodically revealing an intense observation of his subject. He makes his mark with authority and finality, pushing abstraction to the limit while still capturing the essence of his sitters. Auerbach first met Ratcliff at the Slade School of Art in 1983. He was reportedly drawn to her strongly defined features and initially had her pose reclining on a bed. It was in the second sitting that Auerbach decided to seat her instead on a chair facing him; the pose would continue in all three of these portraits the artist created of her. Over the course of Ratcliff's sittings for him, the two would come to relax in one another's presence, enjoying conversations about art and literature.

Auerbach is credited with making some of the most impressive, vibrant, and intuitive portraits of the post-war years. A true draftsman as well as a painter, his graphic works, his signature thick black lines and the concerted mark-making that he employs give his sitters a flickering quality of energy. His method requires an intimate knowledge, not only of his sitter's physiognomy, but also their temperament and personality and most of Auerbach's sitters posed for him every week, often over many years. Connections were important to Auerbach, who despite the physical immediacy of his brushwork, ultimately undertook long and studied contemplations of his subjects. He has attested to finding himself simply more engaged when he knows the people, as they get older and change, enjoying the process of recording this in paint. Auerbach's portraiture features a number of long-standing sitters, including, his wife Julia, Catherine Lampert, Gerda Boehm, Stella West, 'J.Y.M.' and as seen in this present work, Debbie Ratcliff.

Auerbach's distortions in his portraits have been likened to Francis Bacon's figures. However, perhaps unlike Bacon, a warmth emanates from the former's portraits. In Portrait of Debbie Ratcliff III, Auerbach's muse is cast as an impression instead of a likeness. Painting only those whom the artist has formed an intimate bond with, the paintings teeter on incomprehensibility. Auerbach's prolonged engagement with Ratcliff throughout the course of her sittings nonetheless captures a spirit in its fleeting and mercurial beauty. The rapid and vivid strokes perceive an individuality, a humanity. Portrait of Debbie Ratcliff III is a painting of life in action. An individual in the throes of contemplative personal eminence.

Frank Auerbach is widely recognised as one of the most inventive and influential painters of the Post-War period. In 1978, the artist was honoured with a retrospective at London's Hayward Gallery and in 2015, London's Tate Britain, in partnership with Kunstmuseum Bonn, mounted another major retrospective of his work. Today, his paintings reside in the prestigious permanent collections of the Tate Gallery and National Portrait Gallery in London; Museum of Modern Art and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York; and the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid, among many others.