Frank Auerbach: a painter's painter of horrors and joy

Troubling, profound work owned by friend Freud will surely win new generations of fans as he prepares for Tate retrospective

When Frank Auerbach was a few weeks away from his eighth birthday his parents put him on a train from Germany to Britain, his luggage neatly packed and labelled. It was April 1939 and he would never see them again. Within little more than a decade this orphan of the Holocaust would be exhibiting bold, pungent, paint-laden pictures that fascinated critics and fellow artists. In the 1950s the art critic David Sylvester already thought young Auerbach might be a "great painter."

Another fan was Lucian Freud, nine years older and already established, who came to an Auerbach exhibition and simply said to the artist: "Thank you." They were to be close friends until Freud's death in 2011. Freud has left his friend an extraordinary gift. The bequest is technically to the nation. Freud's collection of 15 paintings and 29 drawings by Frank Auerbach has come to the government in lieu of inheritance tax. It is now on view at Tate Britain and will be allocated to public galleries.

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