from Fanzine #380-2, edited by Francisco Carvallho

In the early Seventies, with Ossie Clark [1942 – 1996, British fashion designer] and Celia Birtwell’s [1941, British textile designer and fashion designer] celebrity at its height, [David] Hockney painted the portrait Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy. Birtwell was pregnant with her second son, George, at the time. (The couple’s eldest son, Albert, was born in 1969.) The picture remains among the most visited works in Tate Britain, and is the best-selling postcard in the gallery’s shop to this day. It is a measure of Birtwell’s playfulness that it was only after it had been named that she chose to reveal to her great friend that the cat in question is not, in fact, Percy. Instead, she is the far more interesting and aesthetically pleasing Blanche. Hockney responded in kind, telling the Today programme in 1995: “When she told me that, I told her, well, shut up, because ‘Mr and Mrs Clark and Blanche’ doesn’t sound as good as ‘Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy’!”

“I don’t remember the dress either,”says Birtwell today, for the time being at least, having the last word. “I know I was wearing a kaftan when we first posed for the picture, but it’s a very good dress, isn’t it. I can remember little details of the sitting, probably the problems of it – Ossie’s feet were very difficult to draw and that’s why they’re partially buried in the carpet.”

 

In art-historical circles, much is made of the fact that the work is an inversion of traditional 18th century portraiture, in as much as it is the man who is seated and apparently passive, and the woman who stands, hands on hips before him, dominating the scene. Birtwell is having none of it. “I’ve just always stood with my hands on my hips,”she says.

Susannah Frankel meet Celia Birtwell The Independent, 7 February 2008 ∗