Frank Auerbach b. 1931
Paper: 59.3 x 46.3 cm
This is a rare working proof in which Auerbach has added two lines in blue that were then added to the finished print.
Although landscape has played a major role in his painting, this is
one of only two landscape prints in Auerbach’s oeuvre. The subject is a
tree in Herefordshire - seen from above out of an upstairs window.
First Auerbach tried to etch the plate at the printers from his drawings
but this didn’t work so he eventually took the plates with him to the
country and etched the scene from life in situ. A chalk, charcoal and
gouache of the same subject is in the permanent collection of National
Galleries Scotland.
‘Avoiding any formula for trees, he caught
the amorphous instability of the vast masses of foliage, seen from a
position which masked their supporting anatomy, with a series of broad,
swaying, multivalent shapes, marked out in screenprinted lines across
the finer grained etching’ - Michael Podro, 1990.