When RB Kitaj invented the term “School of London” in 1976 to denote a group of postwar figurative artists that included him, Leon Kossoff and Maggi Hambling, he wasn’t really thinking about where they had their lunch. But the five painters in John Deakin’s evocative photograph – from left, Timothy Behrens, Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon, Frank Auerbach and Michael Andrews – clearly felt that after a hard morning at the easel, a decent meal was in order.
Their spot of choice was Wheeler’s of Old Compton Street, an oyster bar that had come a long way from its Whitstable origins, where it was founded in 1856 by master mariner Captain Richard “Leggy” Wheeler. In Soho, under the proprietorship of Bernard Walsh, it was to reach hitherto unimagined bohemian charms (for a brilliant encapsulation of its flavour, dig out Jeffrey Bernard’s Low Life column in May 1981, occasioned by Walsh’s death; as Bernard wrote, “As far as I’m concerned Wheeler’s is Old Compton Street and all the other branches are mere imitations).
Walsh had set up shop in 1929 and, as Barry Miles explains in his brilliant social history London Calling, had benefited enormously when oysters subsequently escaped rationing, his wife keeping the restaurant open even during the Blitz; Miles also reports that the oysterman, Tim from Brighton, could open 400 shells an hour and might even go up to 600 when they were really busy.
Wheeler’s, with its checked tablecloths and maritime art, was not a cheap lunchtime option, so it was just as well that Walsh was generous with credit for favoured customers: Bacon and Freud ran accounts there, made all the more necessary by the frequency of their visits. Walsh once asked them to paint a portrait of one another: although Bacon painted Freud, Freud preferred to paint Walsh himself, resulting in the piece Portrait of a Man, completed in 1955, which was auctioned at Sotheby’s in 2012 for £1.83m.
Where the Bacons or Auerbachs of today might be discovered having lunch is unclear; probably not Soho, now that Wheeler’s-as-was and that other bohemian haunt, Muriel Belcher’s Colony Rooms, have gone. Likely that those based in London have shifted to the east; but more likely that, in today’s accelerated and professionalised culture, a long, leisurely lunch is a thing of the past. And it’s certainly difficult to know who would give you a plate of oysters and a bottle of Chablis on tick.
Frank Auerbach is at The Tate: Britain until 13 March 2016
