Head of Julia - Profile II is a tersely constructed portrait of Frank Auerbach’s main sitter, his wife Julia. Auerbach’s work of the 1980s was overburdened with bristling forms, lowered atmospheric colouring, and a heightened psychological mood, and this drawing is typical of his graphic output from the period. It is constructed with a complex relation of rubbed in marks, which appear shimmering and silvery, and jagged, sharply defined, heavily reiterated accents. The relation of hard and soft marks in the drawing creates a sense of depth. Where the haze of silvery charcoal implies the underlying mass of the sitter’s body, the sharp accents give a superficial indication of the features. The outline and sinews of the neck, the mouth and nose, and the shape of Julia’s impressive, piled-up hairstyle are all emphasised with linear charcoal accents.

A closely related charcoal drawing from the same year, Head of Julia - Profile, was exhibited in Auerbach’s solo exhibition at Marlborough Fine Art in 1990. Both drawings adopt the same composition, with the sitter’s neck extended and straining out towards the right-hand edge of the picture. A distinctive kink in the back of the head is repeated in both works, which indicates the outline of the skull and suggests the point where Julia’s hair was pulled up. The sitter’s hairstyle contributes significantly to the vertical emphasis of the head. In both drawings, the space around the figure is filled by a shimmering patchwork of markings, partially rubbed down to create a contrast with the outlines and detailing of the head.

Since the 1970s, for his drawings, Auerbach has used the thickest type of Arches NOT surface paper. This support allowed him to work and rework the charcoal he applied, scrubbing at the surface with a rubber or a rag during a sitting, and ultimately removing an entire sitting’s work before continuing to attempt the same image at the next session. From concerted reworking, the paper acquires a patina of scrubbed in charcoal. The superficial graphic accents made at the final sitting are suspended in front of a deep, maze-like constellation of obscured marks.

Head of Julia - Profile II belongs to an informal group of paintings and drawings that reflect Auerbach’s particular interest in profiles in 1989 and 1990. Throughout his life, he has made paintings and drawings in short sequences. Small groups of work made over two- or three-year periods interrogate a specific composition, before a new aspect of the subject is discovered and his attention shifts. Sometimes a certain composition would be pursued with a single sitter, as with the reclining heads of Julia from the mid-1990s. However, there have been occasions when Auerbach imposed the same formal limitations on pictures of multiple sitters. In 1989 and 1990, Auerbach’s paintings and drawings of Julia and one drawing of Catherine Lampert converged in a sequence of images defined by their austere, complex profiles.

Julia Wolstenholme met Auerbach when they were both students at the Royal College of Art. Although he was involved elsewhere (his relationship with Stella West continued until 1973), Julia became pregnant and they married in 1958 shortly before their son Jake was born in March that year. She sat for two drawings by Auerbach in 1960, both made at her home in Vincent Terrace, but their relationship dwindled and was not renewed until 1976. In 1978, Julia began sitting regularly and has continued ever since. She is herself a painter though Auerbach admitted in 2012 he had never seen her work. Speaking in 2001, she said sitting for her husband was ‘like washing up’, eliding it with the traditional domestic chores of a housewife.