It would be lovely to write about Frank Auerbach, just once, without mentioning his childhood, and I suspect the artist would prefer it. But as war once again destroys cities and people in Europe, his story has terrible relevance. Frank Helmut Auerbach was born in Berlin in 1931. When he was seven his Jewish parents sent him to Britain. He never saw them again: they died at Auschwitz.
This orphan of the Holocaust is one of the great witnesses of the modern world. It’s frankly inexplicable that his portrait of Estella Olive West, called Head of EOW 1, and which belongs to Tate, is not on permanent view near the Rothko room at Tate Modern. But that’s all the better for the enterprising Newlands House Gallery, which has ransacked the Tate stores for a stunning group of Auerbachs, including this painting, that spend too much time locked away. They were commissioned and bought by one man, David Wilkie – not your stereotypical international collector with a superyacht, but an art-obsessed insurance clerk from Brentford.
