David Hockney’s art school sketchbooks to feature in National Portrait Gallery exhibition on the artist

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David Hockney’s art school sketchbooks are going on show as part of an exhibition dedicated to the artist.

His student self-portraits are among around 150 works being gathered together by the National Portrait Gallery in the first major show devoted to his drawings in over 20 years.

Also included are sketches of his mother and fashion designer Celia Birtwell, who features in one of his most famous works — Mr And Mrs Clark And Percy.

There will also be several portraits made of two of his close friends, the curator Gregory Evans and master printer Maurice Payne.

The show, which opens next February, will follow Hockney’s career from the Fifties up to the present day and will examine his use of technology, which has seen him swap pencil and paper for Polaroid cameras and iPhone and iPad apps.

Among the highlights will be previously unseen portraits, including a selection of self-portraits from the Eighties which he drew in a burst of creativity which saw him produce a new picture every day for two months.

Gallery director Dr Nicholas Cullinan said Hockney, 81, is “one of the most internationally respected and renowned artists alive today”.

He said: “By focusing on Hockney as a supreme draughtsman and his intimate and revealing sustained depictions of sitters over time — including himself — the exhibition will demonstrate his constant and continuing ingenuity with portrait drawings, which reference both tradition and technology.”

The exhibition will come three years after the sell-out success of a Hockney show at Tate Britain which pulled in just under half-a-million visitors and became the gallery’s most popular exhibition ever.

The Portrait Gallery is hoping for similar success. Curator Sarah Howgate said it had been a “privilege” to work with Hockney on the show.

She added: “For the first time, Drawing From Life presents a series of jewel-like portraits of four subjects dear to David’s heart, as well as self-portraits dating from his schoolboy days in the Fifties right up to his self-scrutiny of the new millennium.”

David Hockney: Drawing From Life runs at the National Portrait Gallery from February 27 to June 28, 2020

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