This drawing was previously exhibited in Act or Perish! (2015, Torun) as a portrait of artist Frank Auerbach, Metzger’s peer and fellow pupil at Bomberg’s life and composition classes. Metzger wrote to Bomberg on 16 April 1953, describing how, in his absence, ‘F. Auerbach volunteered to sit for the head – I found it rather hard work without your presence’. In 1960 at his retrospective exhibition at the Temple Gallery, London, Metzger exhibited two paintings entitled Head of Auerbach, and a drawing of the same title (dated 1952), listed as ‘drawn by David Bomberg and Metzger’, and in 2012 identified two drawings from the attic hoard as portraits of Auerbach. However, the identity of the sitter is by no means certain. Frank Auerbach stated in a letter (10 April 2021), ‘I have absolutely no memory of posing for David Bomberg’s class in Bomberg’s absence, but I suppose that my memory of a forgettable event seventy-three years ago, may be at fault. I certainly never sat for Metzger by himself’.
