Frank Auerbach
J.Y.M. Seated in the Studio III, 1988
oil on fireboard
75.5 x 40.5 cm
Juliet Yardley Mills — known in Frank Auerbach’s paintings simply as J.Y.M. — became one of the artist’s most enduring subjects. She returned to his Camden studio regularly, allowing Auerbach...
Juliet Yardley Mills — known in Frank Auerbach’s paintings simply as J.Y.M. — became one of the artist’s most enduring subjects. She returned to his Camden studio regularly, allowing Auerbach to observe the same face and figure across years of change. Yardley Mills, a dynamic, vital woman whom Auerbach had first met when she was a model at Sidcup College of Art in 1956, brought an energy to her sittings that can be vividly felt in Auerbach’s bold, charged paintings of her.
J.Y.M. Seated in the Studio III is one of a series of eight paintings undertaken in 1988 and forms part of an important group of works with J.Y.M. sitting by the stove. A regular motif in Auerbach’s studio portraits, the stove is given prominence with vigorous looping paint strokes in palest green and orange which is then further articulated in the dynamic electric green and orange used to draw us into the centre of the painting where Julia sits.
J.Y.M. Seated in the Studio III is one of a series of eight paintings undertaken in 1988 and forms part of an important group of works with J.Y.M. sitting by the stove. A regular motif in Auerbach’s studio portraits, the stove is given prominence with vigorous looping paint strokes in palest green and orange which is then further articulated in the dynamic electric green and orange used to draw us into the centre of the painting where Julia sits.