“Hockney? He has immortalised me”

— Celia Birtwell

Celia Reading of 1979 is one of the numerous artworks that David Hockney has created depicting his close friend and muse, designer Celia Birtwell. Hockney has been inspired by Birtwell for over half a century, capturing her myriad likenesses and personality over time. Drawn to her fleeting expressions and unique features, Hockney stated, “She has many faces and I think if you looked through all the drawings I’ve done of her, you’d see that they don’t look alike.” 

Like Hockney, Birtwell was born in the North of England, and she studied textile design at the Royal Technical College in Salford. In 1959, she met Raymond "Ossie" Clark, an up-and-coming fashion designer. The pair were married in London in 1969, with David Hockney in attendance as Clark’s best man. Although Clark initially crossed paths with Hockney in the early 1960s and his likeness first appeared in a Hockney painting titled Domestic Scene, Notting Hill in 1963, it was not until 1969 that Hockney made his first portraits of Celia. In an ink drawing simply titled Celia, Paris, 1969, the 28-year-old Birtwell sits slightly stiffly (out of nervousness, she recalled in retrospect) on a chair in a barely furnished Parisian apartment. Upon meeting, Celia and Hockney immediately formed a special bond, and the British fashion designer has since sat for the artist on more than eighty occasions over the past five decades, most famously in his renowned painting Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy (1971). Today, her portrait has become a signature motif within Hockney’s oeuvre, with her likeness as familiar as the swimming pools of Los Angeles or the landscapes of Yorkshire.