Frank Auerbach (1931–2024) was a German-born British painter celebrated for intensely worked portraits and landscapes. Born into a Jewish family in Berlin, Auerbach was sent alone to Britain in 1939 at age 7 to escape Nazi persecution. He studied at St Martin’s School of Art and the Royal College of Art, while also attending classes taught by painter David Bomberg at Borough Polytechnic. Auerbach settled in London, taking over a Camden Town studio in 1954 that he would use for the next 70 years. Working repeatedly from a small circle of longtime sitters and familiar North London streets, he sought to capture the experience of encountering a person or place rather than simply reproduce its appearance. His brushwork and worked surfaces made the physical act of painting palpable. Auerbach continually revised his compositions, often scraping away an entire day’s work and beginning again. This demanding process produced paintings in which dense layers, gestural marks and vivid color convey a powerful sense of immediacy and presence.