Eva Frankfurther (1930 Berlin, Germany – 1959 London, England)
Self-portrait in Red, 1951-58
Oil on paper
76 x 55 cm
Private Collection
© The Estate of Eva Frankfurther
Immigrated to England 1939
Eva Frankfurther's work was shaped both by the decade through which she lived and worked in 1950s’ Britain and its concern with the realist tradition, and the German heritage from which as an exile she was forcibly separated at a young age but to which she was instinctively drawn. Reviewing an exhibition of her work at Clare Hall, Cambridge in 1979, the art historian and critic Frank Whitford observed, ‘The work on show is so good that I wondered why I had not heard of Eva Frankfurther before. It did not surprise me to find that she was a refugee from Germany, coming to Britain at the age of nine, for her style of portraiture belongs so clearly to a German tradition’. After the war, following her studies at St Martin's School of Art, the wistfulness of an earlier self-portrait was soon expunged, to be replaced by the more forceful manner of Self-portrait in Red.
In this half-length self-portrait the artist shows herself in three-quarter face view with head turned to the left, wearing a vivid red jumper identified as one of her favourites by her sister. She appears with a painting rag in her right hand, which is shown over-large, perhaps to emphasise her profession although no further tools of her trade are included. Paint has been thinly applied in vertical streaks, particularly in the lower half of the picture (so that at times the paper shows through), and in denser layers to the hands, neck and face, the latter finished with a firm, black outline. This is Frankfurther's boldest and most Expressionist self-portrait, however, the sheer variety of her self-portraiture suggests that she was often simply using herself as a convenient model for exploration rather than aiming to achieve a true likeness.
