Frank Auerbach is renowned for his unwavering approach to painting -
meticulously scraping away and adding paint to his highly impastoed
surfaces until his final image emerges - depicting serial subject
matter including portraiture and views of his north London studio. The
present work, Reclining Head of Julia, depicts the artist's wife, painter Julia Wolstenholme, a recurrent sitter for the artist since they married in 1958.

Auerbach's
working method involves an elaborate layering process, in which he
builds up the oil or acrylic, and then scrapes it away, only to paint
upon the remnants of the previous layer, resulting in a heavily textured
and dramatic surface. This arduous process means that a painting
usually takes him at least several months-and sometimes years-to
complete. Auerbach finds this laborious process of painting revelatory,
stating, "To paint the same head over and over leads to unfamiliarity;
eventually you get near the raw truth about it, just as people only
blurt out the raw truth in the middle of a family quarrel."