Signed, titled and dated original etching.

Printer's proof aside fro the edition of 50.

From the Six Etchings of Heads 1980 - 1981 suite.

Printed by Terry Willson of Palm Tree Studio.
Published by Bernard Jacobson, London.
From the collection of Mark Godwin, who helped print the suite at Palm Tree Studio.

Gerda Boehm was Auerbach's older cousin, who became one of his most significant muses and a regular sitter.

Six etchings of Heads began in 1980 when Auerbach was invited to visit the artist Joe Tilson at his studio in Somerset. Like other artists present, Auerbach was encouraged to etch. He asked Tilson to sit for him and within three-quarters of an hour made a couple of sketches and the drawing on the plate. Tilson bit the plate in acid and his son Jake printed it. Back in London Auerbach proceeded to etch the sequence of plates that make up the set, all portraits of artists who, like Tilson, were old friends with Auerbach or relatives who had sat for him frequently. To draw on the plates he used a dart (brought from Woolworths): he had learned at White Ink that almost anything would do to draw into the etching ground, and, as in his earliest drypoints, he did not want to be encumbered with anything but the simplest and most available means.