GUIDE TO A CLASSIC THAT’S REALLY A GAINSBOROUGH IN DISGUISE

PICTURE WITHIN A PICTURE

ON THE wall behind Celia (Mrs Clark) is a tiny replica of an etching from Hockney’s series A Rake’s Progress, inspired by William Hogarth’s paintings chronicling the decline and fall of a rich wastrel. This replica is of Hockney’s Meeting The Good People (Washington), a study of arriving among the great and the good — just as the wellheeled Clarks had done.

A BLOOMING SECRET

IN PAINTINGS of the Annunciation to the Virgin Mary that she will give birth to Jesus, lilies symbolise female purity. There are lilies near Celia, who at the time of Hockney’s painting was pregnant.

KING & QUEEN OF FASHION

THIS painting is given pride of place in the exhibition. Mr and Mrs Clark were a reallife couple, Ossie Clark and his wife Celia Birtwell, and the talk of London in the Seventies. Ossie, dubbed ‘the King of King’s Road’, was the most fashionable clothes designer in Swinging Sixties Britain, creating outfits for The Beatles, Mick Jagger and Liza Minnelli.

DRAWING YOU IN

MR AND Mrs Clark look out from either side of the large open window. The viewer, who looks at the painting centrally, will be at the focal point of the couple’s gaze, a third person in the relationship and so drawn into the painting. They also look out at the artist, a reminder of Hockney’s role in their existence.

THE WRONG WHITE CAT

THE cat in the painting is, in fact, called Blanche, not Percy. The Clarks did have another cat called Percy — which Hockney thought a better name for the picture’s title.

TOGETHER, BUT DIVIDED

HOCKNEY’S declared aim was to ‘paint the relationship of these two people’. But that open window divides the picture and sets up Ossie and Celia as individuals in their own right — something that is accentuated by the fact they are not looking at each other. It was in 1969 that Ossie Clark married fellow designer Celia Birtwell, making them fashion’s number one power couple, and they soon had two sons. Hockney was best man at their wedding. Like Hockney, the Clarks were from the North of England. But when he painted them, in 1971, cracks were beginning to develop in their relationship. Ossie turned to drugs and his fashion business went bust. In 1996, when he was 54, the bisexual Clark was stabbed to death by a former boyfriend. Celia Birtwell, 75, remains an influential fabric designer and is still often painted by David Hockney.