One of Britain's pre-eminent artists, Frank Auerbach has spent all of his adult life in London, and delights in the city's colours and forms. Both his oil paintings and his drawings reveal the intense observation and furious mark-making that he employs to arrive at the essence of his subjects. This book is published to accompany a major retrospective held at the Royal Academy of Arts to mark Auerbach's seventieth birthday. Norman Rosenthal, the Royal Academy's Exhibitions Secretary, considers Auerbach's paintings in the contexts of London and of Western art. Catherine Lampert, curator of the exhibition, contributes an essay on the painter and his sitters, and Isabel Carlisle, Exhibitions Curator, introduces each of the catalogue's four sections: Early Works (1954-70); People; Landscapes; and Drawings. All the works in the exhibition - some ninety paintings and ten drawings, borrowed mainly from private collections - are illustrated in full colour.