Frank Auerbach’s portraits: Matthew Travers and William Feaver in conversation.
Autumn Term, sees the return of the Royal Drawing School series of Creative Conversations; online dialogues between artists, curators and writers. Curated by Dr Claudia Tobin, lectures are held Wednesday evenings live on Zoom.
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Frank Auerbach, 'Head of Julia II', 1960,
Charcoal and chalk on paper, 76.2 x 55.9 cm.
Private Collection. Image courtesy of PIANO NOBILE.
In an open dialogue, Matthew Travers and William Feaver will discuss Frank Auerbach’s celebrated portrait paintings and drawings through the experience of the model and sitting. Alongside this conversation will be a video tour of Piano Nobile Gallery’s current exhibition, Frank Auerbach: The Sitters.
Matthew Travers is a specialist in Modern British Art and became a director at Piano Nobile in 2010. A graduate of The Courtauld Institute of Art, he has curated exhibitions that have actively re-established artists' reputations and markets, notably, From Omega to Charleston: The Art of Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant 1910-1934, Leon Kossoff: A London Life, Sickert: The Theatre of Life and most recently, Frank Auerbach: The Sitters. Matthew advises clients from around the world on their acquisitions, helping them to build remarkable collections. He works closely with leading museums and institutions, and alongside his father, the founder of Piano Nobile, represents the estates of prominent British artists including Craigie Aitchison, William Crozier and R.B. Kitaj. He also edits the gallery’s ever-expanding publications programme.
William Feaver, for many years the art critic for The Observer, is also a painter and has been the curator of exhibitions ranging from George Cruikshank at the V&A to the Tate retrospectives of Michael Andrews and Lucian Freud. His book Pitmen Painters was adapted by Lee Hall for an award-winning play that ran at The National Theatre in 2009. He has conducted upwards of a hundred 'In Conversations' at the Royal Drawing School, including one featuring Frank Auerbach in 2007. His books include Frank Auerbach published in 2009 with an enlarged edition in 2022, and his most recent, The Lives of Lucian Freud: Youth 1922-1968 published in September 2019, was shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction 2019 and has recently gone into paperback. The Wall Street Journal commended it as “everything an artist's biography ought to be - illuminating, allergic to cant, personal, enormously picaresque - but so seldom is.”
Frank Auerbach, 'Head of William Feaver', 2008,
Oil on canvas, 56.1 x 51.3 cm.
Private Collection. Image courtesy of PIANO NOBILE.
Cover image:
Frank Auerbach, 'Head of Julia II', 1960,
Charcoal and chalk on paper, 76.2 x 55.9 cm.
Private Collection. Image courtesy of PIANO NOBILE.