Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy, by David Hockney
A highly perceptive portrait of two friends of the artist and their cat (who was not called Percy!)
David Hockney (born 1937) is by far the best-known and most critically acclaimed British artist of his generation. He is also highly regarded in the United States, where he was based for much of his life before returning to his native Yorkshire (albeit the coast at Bridlington rather than his birth-town of Bradford) in 2005.
Hockney has been an experimenter throughout his career, working with different styles and media and becoming as well-known for his graphic art as for his painting. He has also been highly successful as a photographer and a stage designer.
His “Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy” dates from 1970–71, with Hockney taking a full year to complete it. It was painted using acrylics on canvas and measures 305 by 213 centimetres (120 by 84 inches), thus making the subjects virtually life-size.
It is one of a series of double portraits made by Hockney at around that date, the subjects in this case being two people who were well known to him, the fashion designer Ossie Clark (1942–96) and fabric designer Celia Birtwell (born 1941). The couple had met at Salford College of Art in 1960, and David Hockney had known Clark since…