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Notes

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Auerbach painted Estella (Stella) West known as E. O. W for twenty years. They first met in 1947 when she was 32 and Auerbach 17. She was an amateur actress with the Communist Unity Theatre recently widowed with three children, Sarah, Julia and son Michael. She ran a lodging house at 81 Earl’s Court Road where her tenants included Len Deighton. Auerbach played alongside Stella in a production of Peter Ustinov’s ‘House of Regrets’. They became lovers and Auerbach moved into the basement of the lodging house in 1948. Their relationship of artist and model began. In 1961 West moved to Brentford with her children and Auerbach continued to make the journey out of London to paint her three nights a week in two-hour sessions in her bedroom. The paintings were laid flat on the floor for lack of an easel. These paintings were made alongside intense and densely worked charcoal drawings.