An Image of Celia Study

Summary

This is a study for the lithograph An Image of Celia, 1984-6 (Tate Gallery P20116), one of the artist' several Cubist-inspired prints of the period. The image of the small canvas in the centre is taken from Hockney's portrait of Celia Birtwell made for the cover of the December 1985 - January 1986 issue of French Vogue. In the finished lithograph, the Vogue image is used as one of the two representations of Celia's face. At the lower left corner is a study for the second head, which was considerably altered in the final version.

Celia first met Hockney in Los Angeles in 1964. She is most famously represented in Hockney's large double portrait Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy, 1970-1 (Tate Gallery T01269). With her husband Ossie Clark she was at the top of the fashion industry in London in the 'Swinging Sixties'. Clark designed clothes using Birtwell's textile designs, and sold them from the shop Quorum in Chelsea's King's Road.

Further reading:
David Hockney: A Retrospective, exhibition catalogue, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles 1988, pp.50-1

Terry Riggs
December 1997

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