A Gleam of Light, Warmth & Life: Oliver Barker on Frank Auerbach’s “Head of J.Y.M.”
“She was brought into the world to be a model, she came and sat and it was not quite like anything else. It wasn’t like painting Stella or painting Julia because it was just that… She took poses that were natural to her, and then I somet.mes s suggested things and one would go on. It became like a central spine of what one was doing.”
Artwork: © Frank Auerbach
Executed in the mid-1980s Head of J.Y.M. represents the absolute apex of Frank Auerbach’s critically acclaimed and widely celebrated oeuvre. Imposing in scale for a portrait by the artist and possessing an unrivalled confluence of brushwork and observation, this exceptional painting was chosen for the cover of Robert Hughes’s influential monograph on the artist. Indeed, from a career spanning seven decades, Head of J.Y.M. is a painting of unmatched execution and astounding quality. Famously, Auerbach only depict subjects with whom he is extremely familiar, and Juliet Yardley Mills, referred to by her friends simply as J.Y.M. or Jym, is from a small group of subjects alongside Estella (Stella) Olive West (E.O.W.), his wife Julia, son Jake, and art historian Catherine Lampert among only a handful of others. Of this intimate group, J.Y.M.'s likeness presides over a host of the artist's most iconic paintings, making her the artist’s most celebrated and recognised sitter. Auberach completed over seventy portraits and studies of J.Y.M. over four decades, and the present work was executed nearly twenty years into their friendship. Nick-named Jimmie and Frankie, the two forged an extraordinary friendship that resulted in some of Auerbach’s most significant works. Hand-picked by the artist to be included in his 2001 retrospective at the Royal Academy of Art, Paintings and Drawings 1954-2001, the present work undoubtedly carries both personal as well as an art historical importance within Auerbach’s oeuvre.
“Out of darkness, drawn from unknown areas of the self, the landscape, the heads and nudes remain with us, gleaming in the mind – gleam of light and warmth and life.”
Image/Artwork: © Frank Auerbach
Painted in 1984-85, the expressive peaks of thick impasto and sweeps of luscious oil coalsece into boundless distortions, distinctive of Auerbach’s 1980s output. Brushstrokes on the surface of the present work sink into the viscosity of the paint underlayers, smearing and dragging into J.Y.M.'s twisting head. Painted wet on wet, layers of grey flesh tones are slapped across the cheeks while slick black paint slips down the jawline in a gentle caress. The upward tilted head which turns to the side is one of Auerbach's most well-known and iconic poses, and the present work is the most successful depiction within the handful of works executed in this composition. Emerging from the darkness and painted with raw intensity, the brightness of the pale face is reminiscent of the twisting physiognomies of Francesco Goya, whilst the upward tilt and tight crop of her contorted features recall the portraits of his close friend, Francis Bacon. J.Y.M. relished in the animalistic energy of Auerbach’s portraits of her from this period. Describings her experience sitting for Auerbach, J.Y.M. reminisced: “I didn’t think about.mes at all, or how I looked. If I were a peg it wouldn’t have mattered. I didn’t care what I looked like; I just wanted to get the rhythm and the excit.mes nt” (J.Y.M. quoted in: Ibid, p. 26).
Frank Auerbach’s Portraits of J.Y.M.
Quoting Walter Sickert, Leon Kossoff wrote of Frank Auerbach’s paintings: “Out of darkness, drawn from unknown areas of the self, the landscape, the heads and nudes remain with us, gleaming in the mind – gleam of light and warmth and life.” (Leon Kossoff, “The Paintings of Frank Auerbach,” in Exh. Cat., Frank Auerbach, London, 1978, p. 9) Indeed, emerging from the depths of the dark shadow, Auerbach’s Head of J.Y.M. captures a gleaming sense of life, with strokes of impasto illuminating the enigmatic gaze of Auerbach’s most significant sitters. Auerbach met J.Y.M. in 1956 while he was teaching and she was modelling at Sidcup College of Art. It was J.Y.M. who initiated the relationship, offering to model privately for Auerbach. J.Y.M. became the first person to visit Auerbach’s studio regularly, and for the next four decades, she continued to arrive every Wednesday and Sunday, changing buses twice, from her home in southeast London to sit for Auerbach in his Camden studio. Describings their relationship, J.Y.M. recalled, “we had a wonderful relationship because I thought the world of him and he was very fond of me. There was no sort of romance but we were close. Real friends.” (Julia Yardly Mills quoted in: Catherine Lampert, Ed., Frank Auerbach Paintings and Drawings 1954-2001, London, 2015, p. 27)
Image: © Daily Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Born in Berlin in 1931, Auerbach was sent to the UK to flee persecution from the Nazis. After arriving in Kent, the eight-year-old Auerbach was taken in by a German Jewish educator who founded Bunce Court, the school that would become Auerbach’s home for the next eight years. It was at Bunce Court that Auerbach met Wilhelm Marckwald, a former actor, director and producer who led the school theatre group. Drawing analogies between painting and acting, Auerbach said: “What I have in my mind is, as it were, the lump of the subject, the three-dimensional entity which I somehow try to inhabit and become – in the way that an actor would don a character or become a part – and to make stat.mes nts about it from inside” (Frank Auerbach quoted in: Catherine Lampert, Frank Auerbach. Speaking and Painting, London, 2015, p. 23).
Artwork/Image: © The Estate of Francis Bacon. All rights reserved, DACS/Artimage 2022.
The fervent strokes of Auerbach’s oil paint are not.mes rely a representation of the individual, but a sense of embodiment of their entire being. This emphasis on capturing the essence of the subject was further developed under the tutelage of David Bomberg in his evening classes at the Borough Polytechnic, where Bomberg encouraged an organic, spontaneous approach to capturing form, continuously attempting, erasing and re-doing until the full complexity of the sitter was captured. Indeed, having by this point known J.Y.M. for nearly twenty years, the present work powerfully illustrates Auerbach's stat.mes nt that "the person you're involved with most, say, is the most complicated to capture because you can't do a superficial likeness, you can't do a portrait painter's impression. You want something that.mes asures up to the amount of feeling you have there" (Frank Auerbach quoted in: William Feaver, Frank Auerbach, New York, 2009, p. 230).
Image: © Timothy Taylor Gallery
In the war-torn London of the 1950s, Auerbach forged his reputation amongst a new generation of artists – including Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon and Leon Kossoff – taking inspiration from the city and people around him. Executed with a dynamic vitality, Head of J.Y.M. captures the sincerity of Auerbach’s relationship with Mills, their mutual respect as artist and sitter, and their intimacy as friends. As Auerbach spoke of his painting process: “All sorts of artists, perhaps most of the good ones, have painted ‘models’ ‘posing’, but I am interested in recording things, not models posing, but people who come to the studio as it exists.” (Frank Auerbach quoted in: Catherine Lampert, Frank Auerbach. Speaking and Painting, London, 2015, p. 194) Indeed, the present work is a beautiful ode to their enduring friendship and stands at the very pinnacle of Auerbach’s practice.