Meaning & Analysis

Albert Clark is a signed lithographic print by David Hockney from 1979 that depicts Albert Clark - one of the two sons of the artist’s lifelong friends Celia Birtwell and Ossie Clark. While Hockney rarely produced children portraits, those depicting Clark siblings hold a special place in his body of work. The artist watched Albert and George grow up and recorded the boys’ coming-of-age in their natural environment through paintings, drawings, and polaroid photographs.

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Capturing Albert in full-length, the print exposes the right side of the boy’s face. A sense of composure emanates from the picture as the boy sits in an armchair with his hands clasped in front and looks wistfully at an indefinite point before him. Executed in crisp, sepia-ink contour lines, the picture exhibits the economy of means on a par with the level of accuracy evident in how the picture preserves the characteristic look of the sitter. The artist, known for his preference to portray close friends and family members rather than strangers, commented in this context: ”When you come to use line, if you know what you’re looking at, it’s much easier to make the line meaningful, to find a linear solution to what you want to depict.“