CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 5/8/2020

David Hockney's mother, a lifelong muse

David Hockney's 1978 "Mother, Bradford. 19 Feb 1978" is reproduced from Drawing from Life, the essential new catalog from National Portrait Gallery, London. Featuring no fewer than 23 portraits of the artist's mother, Laura Hockney, a vegetarian and committed Methodist who always supported her son's desire to be an artist, this book is all about Hockney's muses. He made this extra-compelling drawing on the day of his father's funeral. Curator Sarah Howgate notes the artist's use of sepia ink and reed pen, as Van Gogh had done in his portraits. "Using a minimal line, Hockney conveys the sadness in his mother’s face as she looks directly at her son, as if seeing her husband reflected in him."