Frank Auerbach aimed only at one memorable image

Almost every day of the week, for more than six decades, Frank Auerbach would stride along Mornington Crescent. It was, and is, a typical North London street: tall terraced houses of soot-red brick and stucco, with a railed garden on one side. Often he carried a plain pad and a stick of graphite, to make sketches at sunrise before his neighbours stirred. He enjoyed the early, oily yellow light on the buildings and the sleeping cars.