David Hockney’s Seventies drawings are swoony. Among a cluster of ephemera here, including his invitation designs for Celia Birtwell, the textile-artist friend whom he’s drawn for more than 50 years, is the most exquisite sketch of her, made over lunch at Langan’s Brasserie in April 1970 – dashed off, but utterly precise.
A room of this retrospective of portraits made over eight decades, from the Fifties to now – briefly open in 2020 before lockdown, and now embellished with new paintings – is devoted to his more formal portrayals of Birtwell, in ink, lithograph, etching, coloured pencil and crayon.
