‘He left the oven open for heat’

David Landau, businessman

I first met Frank Auerbach in 1983, when I was looking for someone to paint a portrait of the historian Asa Briggs for Worcester College, Oxford. I thought – and still think – he is our greatest living painter. I wrote to Frank, telling him this, and he agreed to meet.

Frank needs his subjects to sit every week for a very long time, sometimes for more than a year. This was impossible for Lord Briggs, so I suggested he paint me instead. “Well,” he said, “if you are reliable and can come on Fridays, then yes.” I have been doing so more or less ever since.

In the 1980s, Frank’s studio – in Camden, London – was totally basic. There was just the bed and a corner for washing in. The loo was outside. It was tremendously hot in summer and freezing cold in winter. To warm it up, Frank had to put the oven on and leave the door open. On the floor were all these big blobs of dried paint: layers and layers, going back 40 years. It was like something out of La Bohème.

Head of David Landau, 1990, by Frank Auerbach. Photograph: Marlborough Fine Art

At first, my sessions were on Fridays at 6pm. I was the boss of my own company and, by Friday evening, everything would have had hit the fan. Frank would open the door and say: “Oh, trouble at the mill?” I’d say: “Yes, big trouble.” Then we’d start talking about Tintoretto or Veronese or Fragonard – and Frank would paint while I’d think about other things. It became a kind of catharsis.



He has now made 45 portraits of me. Each one draws me back to the time it was painted. He is a tremendous friend: the only person, apart from my wife, who I’ve seen so consistently for so long. He has shown me how art is produced: how hard it is to achieve greatness, and how exciting it is to be there when, after 10 or 12 months, a painting is finally finished. It’s a magic moment – like witnessing a birth.

‘His breathing changes’



William Feaver, writer and critic



It is very ritualised. One goes to his studio, at a fixed time, for a fixed period: I do Mondays, six till eight. There’s a chair we all sit in – a Windsor, not comfortable, no cushion. Two hours is just about enough before the bum goes to sleep entirely. I’m given a cup of tea when I arrive – green tea at the moment, though sometimes he goes out and buys milk specially. We chat, and then there comes a point when we stop and Frank concentrates entirely on the painting. I can tell when this moment is coming, just from the sound of his breathing.

I started sitting in 2003, while I was writing a book about him. I’d known him on and off for years. Back in the 70s, I was the first person to write about Frank and Lucian Freud in terms of admiration. The book took two years. I carried on sitting, and now my Monday session is firm, unalterable. I thoroughly enjoy it. I don’t sit there and think beautiful thoughts, but instead make lists and go over things in my head. It’s rather like being at the dentist.

William Feaver Seated, 2011, by Frank Auerbach. Photograph: Marlborough Fine Art

Normally, I feel I’m just sitting, a kind of useful lump. But one day recently, Frank laid his painting on the floor, as he does at the end of every session, and I was taken aback to see just how precisely he’d captured the way I was feeling. It had grown dark outside – he works with natural light – and the painting looked fairly miserable. We both knew there were reasons for this.

Frank has an extraordinary, intuitive understanding of what makes a painting worthwhile. He never produces anything glib or splashy. Unless he believes a painting is finished, each week he scrapes off everything he did in the last session and starts again. He wants each painting to be something new and unprecedented. He’s not content with just getting by. He always thinks he’s going to do better. Eventually he does – and he’ll say: “What do you think – shall I keep it?”

‘He gave me toast and rum’

Catherine Lampert, art historian and curator

I wore something special the first time: a little patterned jacket and a skirt. It was May 1978, I was 31 and I’d just helped organise an exhibition about Frank at the Hayward in London. He asked me to sit for him. I was very keen on his work, and I’d seen every picture of his I could, in preparation for the show. So I agreed.

The studio is small. You’re only a couple of metres away from Frank. When I first started sitting, it had a paraffin stove. I’d been living with my artist-boyfriend in a similar studio, so this didn’t seem too primitive. Frank would make me cheese on toast and rum with lemon. I’d never sat before, though I’d watched others. It was fascinating. Still is.

The first thing he did was a charcoal drawing, which took just as long and was just as arduous as a painting: the charcoal was crumbling and he was rubbing it out, patting it with his fingers. You sit still and look at a fixed point, aware of what is happening on the easel, although you can’t see it directly. I change my pose very little – occasionally I look to the left or the right – and always sit in the same chair. It’s only been replaced once, in all these years.

Head of Catherine Lampert, 2004, by Frank Auerbach. Photograph: Marlborough Fine Art

Before I leave, I usually have an eau de vie while he’s cleaning his brushes, and we talk. He doesn’t leave the studio much any more, but he’s always cheering on new artists, especially painters. I think he gets a lot, vicariously, from his sitters’ lives.

I’m not sure how many portraits Frank’s made of me, but it’s usually about two a year, so it must be more than 60 by now. I don’t have a favourite. What I do know, because I have a few at home, is that they are extraordinarily mobile. It’s not just the changing light and the angle of the portrait. There’s something about them: they capture a sense of life.

‘You can’t tell I was hungover’

Jake Auerbach, film-maker

At first, it was a way of getting to know my father again. I was 17 or 18 when I started sitting, and I hadn’t seen him in 12 years. It was good for both of us, because we each had something to do while we talked – even though sitting is, perforce, static. I remember the smell of the paint and the charcoal. The studio wasn’t very clean, by some people’s standards, but it was a workspace, with a feeling of there being a job to do.

I don’t get self-conscious: sitting isn’t like posing for a photograph. Occasionally he’ll turn the chair, but it’s not as if he says: “OK, sit there, put your arms like that, and look in this direction.” It’s a matter of just being oneself.

Head of Jake, 2009-10, by Frank Auerbach. Photograph: Marlborough Fine Art

It is intimate. Although I am passive, physically, we are working together – it feels like a natural conversation, not an interrogation. And if you work with someone for 40 years, you get to know them well. It can be physically tiring, but mentally it’s fantastically useful – a time when I have to do nothing. I don’t have to look at emails or answer the phone. I just let my brain go fallow.

Does the relationship we have in the studio differ to the one we have outside? I’m not sure. During the second hour there’s silence, which there rarely is when we’re out in a restaurant. But it’s not as if the painting isn’t about our relationship. It is – it’s about everything. I’m making a film about my father, which I said I’d never do.

I think people sit for my father because he’s good company. He’s recording lives, their different facets, bit by bit. Looking back, I can tell from certain portraits when I was feeling low or unwell. But it’s a feeling, rather than anything specific. I defy anyone to pick out the ones he painted when I was hungover.

• The Frank Auerbach exhibition is at Tate Britain, London, 9 October to 13 November.