The subject of this painting, the artist's wife, has sat for the artist for decades, yet in each picture she is seen afresh, as though for the first time. As Kossoff has explained:

`Every time the model sits everything has changed. You have changed, she has changed. The light as changed, the balance has changed. The directions you try to remember are no longer there . everything has to be reconstructed daily, many many times... A painter is engaged in a working process and the work is concerned with making the paint relate to his experience of seeing and being in the world.'

Leon Kossoff, `Nothing is ever the same' in Leon Kossoff, British Pavilion, XLVI Venice Biennale,

British Council, 1995.


The result of this obsessive attempt to grasp the subject and intensify the experience is according to Nicholas Serota a `passionate portrayal of the human presence. these are paintings which simultaneously record our own time and transcend a particular moment or place. They are a vision which both reflects and inspires.' Nicholas Serota, `Foreword', Leon Kossoff, Tate Gallery, 1996.

Head of Rosalind I may be compared to a painting of the same subject in the British Council Collection.