'The Sitting Room', Frank Auerbach

Artwork details

Artist

Frank Auerbach (born 1931)

Title

The Sitting Room

Date 1964

MediumOil paint on board

Dimensionssupport: 1282 x 1277 mm frame: 1376 x 1376 x 84 mm

Collection

Tate

Acquisition Presented by the Friends of the Tate Gallery 1984

Reference

T03933

Not on display

Summary

The Sitting Room was painted in Auerbach's Camden Town studio, which he has occupied since the 1950s. The painting shows the sitting room in the Brentford house of Auerbach's friend Stella West ('E.O.W.'). West, the daughter of the philosopher O.S. Wauchope, was Auerbach's model for most of his nudes and female heads prior to 1973. This house was a special place to the artist and during the years 1963-5 he went there three times a week, in the evenings, to paint E.O.W; he also began making drawings of the room and its contents during this period (reproduced S. Bann, Experimental Painting, London 1970, p.96). Stella appears in profile to the left of The Sitting Room, leaning forward in her chair, while across the room, in the other chair, is Julia, one of her daughters. Beside this chair is a tall lamp standard with a curvy edged shade, providing a major light source in the room and the lightest tonal area of the composition. Between the two chairs is a low collapsible table, and behind the background chair, at the top right of the composition, is a window revealing the evening light outside. On the mantelpiece directly above Stella's head is a small reddish object, a depiction of a sculpted plaster head made by an amateur artist. Set on the wall above the mantelpiece is a painting in a square frame, a portrait of E.O.W. by Auerbach… (read more)