Footnotes

Provenance
The Artist
The F.S. Hess Collection, London, by 1959, thence by family descent to the present owner
Private Collection, London

Exhibited
London, Beaux Arts Gallery, Frank Auerbach, November-December 1959, cat.no.1, (as E.O.W. Lying on her Bed I (oil sketch), loaned by F.S. Hess)

Literature
William Feaver, Frank Auerbach, Rizzoli, New York, 2009, p.243, cat.no.67, (col.ill., as Nude Study)

"I think all good painting looks as though the painting has escaped from the thicket of prepared positions and has entered some sort of freedom where it exists on its own, and by its own laws, and inexplicably has got free of all possible explanations." - Frank Auerbach

The present work is consigned from a distinguished collection and was one of several Auerbach's owned by Fritz Siegfried Hess, a German émigré, successful businessman and formidable patron of the arts. Born in 1886 into a German Jewish family from Wiesbaden, he was a well-known art collector based in Berlin, to the extent of forming a close friendship with the renowned art dealer Alfred Flechteim. The 1920s crash and the concurrent rise of National Socialism in Germany - particularly the latter - provided no choice, and Hess left Germany, landing in England in 1933 with a South American Passport and a no work, twelve-month renewable visa. Prior to this, major auctions were held in both Lucerne and Berlin to dispose of Hess's remarkable art collection. The thick catalogues read as a 'who's who' of the history of art and works by Tintoretto, El Greco, Goya, Rubens, Van Dijck, Daumier, Renoir, Cezanne, Toulouse Lautrec, Munch, Braque, Kokoschka, Barlach and Rodin were all offered for sale. Living first in Belsize Park, then Daleham Mews in Hampstead, Hess started afresh forming a new collection, particularly focused on Modern British and Irish Art and including the works of new emerging names, such as Frank Auerbach.

Hess initially formed a relationship with Auerbach via the artist's Uncle Jakob and bought works both directly from him and later via Beaux Arts Gallery. Other paintings by Auerbach from the collection included Head of Leon Kossoff (see Sale; Sotheby's, 11 November 2009, lot 187, sold for £1,777,250) and Head of E.O.W. III (sold in these rooms, 30 June 2010, lot 127, for £860,000). In Auerbach, Hess recognised not only a raw talent on the cusp of greatness but a shared history of emigration from Berlin to London, a history also shared by that other titan of 20th Century British Art – Lucian Freud. Hess enjoyed a friendship with Lucian's father, Ernst, who was his long-standing architect, both back in Berlin and also in London across the modest property portfolio of rental flats he built up once settled in the UK. As an informal sponsor, he bought works directly from the young Freud to support his early endeavours, one such example being Untitled (Interior Drawing, The Owl) (see Sale; Sotheby's, 22 October 2020, lot 111, where sold for £982,500).

E.O.W. Lying on her Bed I is offered at auction here for the very first time, having resided in this same prominent family collection since it was painted and is a striking study for the seminal E.O.W. Nude on Bed (1959) (see Fig.1). The latter was formerly in the collection of Jean Chrysler followed by Muscarelle Museum of Art, before it was sold in these rooms on 16 November 2011 (as lot 90 for £780,450). Both finished oil and oil study were exhibited in the same Beaux Arts exhibition in 1959, this lot as catalogue number 1 and the larger work as catalogue number 3. The model, Estella West, whose name is shortened to E.O.W. throughout Auerbach's career, was among the first sitters for the artist, appearing as early as 1952. She was an aspiring theatre actress at the Communist Unity Theatre in Camden, North London, where both she and Auerbach appeared in Frank Marcus's production of Peter Ustinov's House of Regrets. The two first met at Stella's home on Earl's Court Road where the cast would practice and where later Auerbach would rent a room and become her lover. William Feaver explains "Their relationship was to last over twenty-five years and involve more than seventy paintings, in the titles of which she is identified as E.O.W. She thought him "a beautiful, mature young man; he had a kitchen chair and he'd be kneeling, painting on his knees. I used to think, why am I doing this [sitting for him] with three children and a demanding job? I just loved him.' (William Feaver, Frank Auerbach, Rizzoli, New York, 2009, p.9). Commenting on this deep rooted and, in the case of the present lot, intimate relationship enjoyed with his life models, Auerbach states "I think life drawing from the body of a stranger is a fine thing in an art school, but there's a real reason for recording someone whom one's close to. For one thing one knows exactly whether it's 'like' or not. For another, if the person has wakened one's mind, one knows what's not worthy of her, so one isn't going to pull any funny little tricks. Besides, if you're working with someone with whom you are involved, she may get fed up; you might quarrel; she may find it an intolerable burden and punish you by not sitting for you. The whole thing's got a totally different sort of tension from the simple transaction with a hired model.' (Robert Hughes, Frank Auerbach, Thames and Hudson, London, 1990, p.133).

Painted during the final year of the decade, the Chrysler E.O.W. Nude on Bed can be considered among the artist's early masterpieces and is the most fully realised oil of the five painted in 1959 depicting E.O.W. lying full length on her bed. The present lot from 1958 immediately precedes it in the catalogue raisonné of the artist's work and uniquely shows us the genesis of this tightknit body of pictures, which were instrumental in bringing about a shift within Auerbach's palette. E.O.W. is depicted here on a piece of thick, rustic panel that resembles a floorboard. The atypical support gives the impression of immediacy, a sense that Auerbach simply could not wait and needed to record this figure in oils on whatever was available in that moment. This spontaneity continues through the fluid and vibrant paintwork of the reclining figure, applied in the same palette as the later picture, using thick layers of white, orange, yellow, red and green. Here, the model reclines in exactly the same position as the larger composition, whereas in others she has been rotated and appears more exposed (there is also a charcoal and chalk on paper from the same series, where the model lies on her front (Collection of the British Museum)). E.O.W.'s knees are drawn into her torso with the arms tucked in underneath them. She appears somewhat vulnerable, with the absence of sheets to conceal her naked body and is positioned centrally facing the spectator. Her gaze is lowered, suggesting she is reluctant to engage with either artist or observer and although the bed is imagined here, Auerbach has outlined the beginnings of the background that would be developed using the same green pigment in the finished version a year later. The present lot therefore presents a unique opportunity to acquire a work by one of Britain's most important painters that not only enjoys impeccable heritage but offers the viewer a rare insight into the artist's working process.

We are grateful to Catherine Lampert for her assistance in cataloguing this lot.