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A Hockney for the National
28.09.07The National Portrait Gallery has bought a large recent self-portrait by David Hockney.
It was purchased thanks to gift aid from tickets sold at its Hockney portraits exhibition, and funds from a gala marking the gallery's 150th anniversary.
A special price of $300,000 (£148,000) was negotiated as a result of the goodwill generated by the exhibition, which ran for four months until January.
Although the gallery already owns photographs of the Yorkshire-born artist and a self-portrait drawing and etching, this is its first painted portrait of him. The oil painting shows him with his friend and former assistant, Charlie Scheips, a New York-based curator.
It was painted two years ago in Hockney's studio in Los Angeles and was one of the most recent works in the portraits exhibition.
Sandy Nairne, the director of the National Portrait Gallery, said: "Acquiring David Hockney's great self-portrait is one of the wonderful results of the 150th anniversary year. I am most grateful to all our supporters."
The gallery hopes to buy more works in future by asking visitors to make a gift aid donation on top of the admission price.
The work, Self-portrait With Charlie, will go on display from 11 October in the contemporary space next to the autumn show, Pop Art Portraits. That exhibition also includes two of Hockney's most famous works from the Sixties, Portrait Surrounded by Artistic Devices and I'm In The Mood For Love.
Meanwhile, a little-known London artist has sold works worth hundreds of thousands of pounds to a roll-call of Hollywood stars in his first American show.
Angelina Jolie, the Olsen twins, Christina Aguilera and Sharon Osbourne were among those who bought pieces by 32-year-old Antony Micallef.
Osbourne attended the private view in Los Angeles with her son Jack and paid an estimated £347,000 for a painting and a sculpture of two angels fighting.
Micallef studied art at Plymouth University and won second prize in the 2000 Portrait Award at the National Portrait Gallery.
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Reader views (1)
This is David Hockney does Velazquez. Simple as that. Which is a pity, because he is a considerable draughtsman and a good camera. I prefer his earlier work: Mom and Dad, Ossie Clark and Percy and his best one, that weird portrait of the Californian millionaires in their sculpture garden. Those were far more telling. Hockney is not a Rembrandt, nor a Raphael or Leonardo. Had he used another way to do a self portrait, I may have chosen one of those, but you'd have to remind me of what they look like!
- Carlyle Braden, Croydon, UK
