David Hockney, Celia, Paris, 1969

1969

Medium

ink on paper

Dimensions

43.2 × 35.6 cm

Status

In Gallery Collection

Collect24 Art ID

C24-153548

'We have always felt completely comfortable in each other’s company. We amused each other. I found posing for him to be a very intimate, and silent, affair…Before commencing we have a conversation about how he wants me to look. I could look left or right. He may say, ‘Move your arm.’ ‘Sit further back.’ ‘Look out of the window’ then comes the moment when he suddenly says, ‘I like that.’ Whilst he’s drawing me I can see the intensity, struggle and concentration on his face. The intensity is extraordinary. After an hour or so he’ll say, ‘do you want to take a break, luvvie?’ Sometimes I take a peek at the portrait, other times I prefer to wait until it’s finished. He always says he doesn’t appeal to vanity. Whatever my feelings are, they are always amazing.’ Celia Birtwell on sitting for David Hockney Hockney first met Celia Birtwell, the British textile designer and fashion designer in 1968 through the designer Ossie Clark, Celia’s partner at the time and a friend of David’s from Royal College of Art days. The pair grew close and a year later, in the summer of 1969, Hockney was the best man at Celia and Ossie’s wedding. After the breakdown of his relationship with Peter Schlesinger, Hockney and Celia’s friendship strengthened and she would become one of the few women, aside from his mother, that Hockney would know closely. This bond is reflected in the number of works created by Hockney throughout his career which feature Celia; she is the subject of thirty of his prints- a quarter of all his print portraits- and along with Ossie Clark, is immortalized in one of his most infamous paintings, Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy, 1970-1, now in the Tate Gallery’s permanent collection. (Fig.1) The present work was produced in Paris just a few months before Celia and Ossie married and it already articulates a wonderful intimacy between the artist and his sitter. Celia’s posture is poised yet relaxed and her eyes are averted in a convivial gesture of acquiesce; the feeling is one of quiet contemplation on both the part of the both people involved. This drawing is one of several that Hockney produced of Celia whilst in Paris and they not only represent Hockney’s growing closeness to her but to the idea of femininity itself.