Euston Steps - Study

‘Euston Steps – Study’ is one of a number of paintings made by Frank Auerbach in the train stations, building sites and streets around his studio in London’s Camden Town. This is one of a series of paintings depicting the steps at Euston Station. While the word ‘study’ suggests that this is a preliminary experiment for a larger or more polished work, in fact this is a finished painting. The expressionist, thick impasto brushwork and the palette of browns, greens and oranges are typical of Auerbach’s painting of this periodIn both his portraits and landscapes, Auerbach has attempted to capture something deeper than what is immediately seen. He once described the difference between ‘the sort of painter who is arranging things on a surface for their own sake and the sort of painter who has a permanent sense of the tangible world … to make a true record, the experience has in some way to be digested and turned into the artist’s gesture’.Jacky Klein