Leon Kossoff met Frank Auerbach at St Martin's. In the early 50's he worked on building exteriors and on portraits of his parents and family. He reworked paintings as he did drawings. These were the two general subjects to preoccupy him for much of his life. Rail stations and swimming pools, where his son was taking lessons, also contributed, and the latter lightened his palette. His impasto rivaled, even exceeded that of our recent subject David Park. The similarities between these two groups continues to impress me.

This painting, Woman Ill in Bed, Surrounded by Family, 1965, which lives at the Tate, appears to me almost as a Russian icon, or oddly as Madeline once appeared with her fellow orphans at a table headed by Miss Clavell. The pathos of the characters, whose faces are anguished, and of the dying woman who is in agony, is Christ-like, with disciples gathered round. However you read it, it is so moving, the window open high above as a place she might eventually ascend to heaven.

A cache of 14 of his paintings that were stolen from a truck en route to Italy tormented Kossoff, and a new retrospective which will travel to LA in 2022, is meant to help possibly jog people's memories about where they might have seen these. The Mafia was suspected. In September a catalogue raisonne will also be published. Kossoff recently died in 2019.