C elia from 1978 is a transfixing and tender portrait of one of David Hockney’s dearest friends, the renowned designer Celia Birtwell. Portraiture has long been a linchpin of Hockney’s creative endeavor that depicts, with his signature characteristic flair, the environments, fashions and visages of the artist’s milieu. This vibrant portrait encapsulates not only Hockney’s technical mastery of color and form, but also permits us to see one of Hockney’s closest confidants as if looking through the artist’s own eyes. Hockney first met Celia in Los Angeles in 1964 and their friendship intensified in 1971 the wake of the artist’s break-up with his long-term partner Peter Schlesinger. In a series of portraits of Cecila, executed in Paris between 1973 and 1975, Hockney honed his drawing style by capturing the deeply personal idiosyncrasies that underpin the inner truths of his sitters all within an effeminate veil of colorful vivacity.

In the present work, Hockney fuses formal experimentation and intuitive execution, combining the artist’s art historical reference points with the candid and sensitive gaze that defines his remarkable freehand portraiture and the experience of sitting face to face with a dear friend. It is through this career-long examination of himself, his closest friends and family, and art world personalities, that Hockney’s portraits form a crucial element of his practice, integrated into his shifting palette, styles and modes of production across many mediums. Celia is most famously represented in Hockney's large double portrait Mr. and Mrs. Clark and Percy, now held in the collection of the Tate in London, featuring Celia with her husband, Ossie Clark. The immediacy of the present work demonstrates the virtuosity of one of the most prodigious artists of the post-modern period. Held in private hands since it was acquired in 1980, Celia is an intimate portrayal of one of the artist’s most frequent and important sitters.