Kitaj's late painting Kossoff after Auerbach encapsulates his major preoccupations.

In Kitaj's last paintings the artist finally achieved the late style that he had sought for so many years. In their loosened handling of paint, intense colour and choice of imagery these paintings summarise many of Kitaj's long term preoccupations. As Nicholas Serota has observed: 'These small paintings have the same incisive and tough rigour as his best paintings of the previous forty years and reflect his admiration for other artists.' (Nicolas Serota in R. B. Kitaj. Small Paintings, Marlborough Gallery, New York, p.40). Similarly Frank Auerbach has reflected that 'Intensity fluctuates; work goes up and down over a lifetime. As far as I can judge from reproductions, Kitaj finished on a high. (Frank Auerbach in R. B. Kitaj. Small Paintings, Marlborough Gallery, New York, p.22).

Amongst these late paintings Kossoff after Auerbach embodies Kitaj's greatest preoccupations: the artists of the School of London - a term that he is widely credited with having invented - the theme of Jewish identity in Diaspora and the development of a 'late style'.

In 1976 in the catalogue of the Arts Council exhibition, The Human Clay, Kitaj championed a School of London. As Kitaj later explained: `I used the term loosely. I meant that a School had arisen, like School of Paris and School of N.Y., where a number of world class painters and a larger number of good painters had appeared in London maybe for the first time... Like N.Y. and Paris, the London School will continue until its best painters die.' (Kitaj, letter to James Hyman, undated, May 1989). 'The School of London has no peer abroad... the artists are just plain gifted beyond the resources of other schools. For the moment, N.Y. seems played out and Paris doesn't count.' (R. B. Kitaj, letter to James Hyman, undated, November 1987).

Then in his First Diasporist Manifesto (1989) Kitaj made explicit the immigrant composition and theorisation of this School of London: 'One reading of both the Human Clay and my manifesto ... can illuminate a concept (my particular concept?) of School of London... Cosmopolitanism can be shown, beyond doubt, to have been an emphatic force in determining the particular art resonance of these three cities - Paris, N.Y. and now London. One only dares to use the inaccurate terms Schools of N.Y. and School of London in the same breath with School of Paris because in all three cases, extraordinary artists (Paris being out of sight in this) set an unusually high standard of world class and in each of these milieu, half the artists had been born elsewhere... All these places - Paris, N.Y., London, Weimar were safe havens where the rootless might play for a while and even pretend a sense of place Kafka, Benjamin and Joyce are great exemplars of this mode... as well as Pound, Eliot and a host of other expatriates (or Jews).' (R. B. Kitaj, letter to James Hyman, undated, May 1991).

Kitaj's portrait of Leon Kossoff by referencing a portrait of the subject by Frank Auerbach not only embodies Kitaj's fascination with the cosmopolitan roots of the School of London but also reinforces the importance of both artists to Kitaj. In doing so it also echoes his own painting of his wedding to Sandra Fisher, which includes from left to right: Freud, Auerbach, Sandra Fisher, Kitaj, Hockney and Kossoff.

Stylistically the exciting freedom of this painting is characteristic of Kitaj's desire to find a late style, something he admired in artists such as Rembrandt and Titian, and which he finally achieved in the last years of his life.