Reclining Figure
Signed Print

Shown reclining against a large pillow, his eyes slightly closed, his hands clasped together on his belly, Gregory Evans is the picture of relaxation in Hockney’s 1975 portrait. With his head turned away from us he appears to be focused on someone or something else, perhaps listening intently in this moment of repose. Delicately rendered in fine lines and elegant washes of grey black, the portrait represents Hockney’s talent for etching which he began working with while still at college in the early ’60s. Since then he pushed the medium to its limits, exploring its capacity for both simple line drawings and tonal work. Hockney met Evans in 1971 and the pair immediately hit it off. They were a couple for ten years, and Hockney has produced 40 portraits of Gregory, who still works and is friends with the artist, over the course of his long career. When asked in an interview who the love of his life has been, Hockney replied, ‘Maybe Gregory’. Suffused with love and intimacy the portrait allows us a glimpse into this relationship and the attention paid by the artist to his lover as a subject of both his affections and the artwork.