November 2, 2023 – January 21, 2024
David Hockney: Drawing from Life
Portraits of Family, Friends and Self Across Six Decades
National Portrait Gallery, London, United Kingdom
David Hockney: Drawing from Life traced more than six decades of portraiture through the artist’s repeated observation of a small circle of people. Self-portraits appeared alongside images of his mother Laura Hockney, Celia Birtwell, Gregory Evans and master printer Maurice Payne.
The 2023 presentation returned to an exhibition that had been open for only twenty days before the National Portrait Gallery closed in March 2020. Newly added paintings from Normandy extended the project into Hockney’s most recent period and reinforced the exhibition’s central idea: portraiture develops through time shared between artist and sitter.
Portraiture as a Long Relationship
Hockney rarely treated portraiture as a single encounter. The same people returned over many years, allowing changes in age, mood and intimacy to accumulate across the exhibition.
These works reveal the sitter, but they also record Hockney’s own changing attention. A parent, friend or partner may appear differently as the relationship and the artist’s method evolve.
The result is not a conventional family album. Drawing becomes a sustained form of knowledge built through familiarity, conversation and the physical duration of sitting.
From Pencil to iPad and Acrylic
The exhibition also functioned as a history of Hockney’s drawing practice. Pencil, colored crayon, ink, watercolor, photographic tools and digital screens each produced a different relationship between line and presence.
Technology never removed the importance of working from life. Even the digital portraits preserve the directness of hand, eye and immediate response.
The Normandy paintings added another medium and another social circle. Familiar friends appeared alongside people connected with Hockney’s daily life, extending the democratic attention of his portraiture beyond conventional distinctions between celebrated and ordinary sitters.
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