Small Head Of Gregory
Signed Print

With his cherubic curls and full lips, Gregory Evans stares out beyond the frame presenting his face in profile. Shown casually leaning against the wall in a plain white t-shirt he stands out from the other sitters in the series who often seem overtly posed or formal. While lithography was a somewhat lengthier process than etching, Hockney retains the immediacy of his earlier prints and drawings in this work, which he titled Small Head of Gregory. A sense of intimacy is palpable too, not just through the close cropping of the head and the small size of the sheet, but also from the knowledge that Hockney and Evans were lovers for ten years; when Hockney was asked in an interview who the love of his life has been he replied, ‘Maybe Gregory’. The portrait is a marked contrast to the other work depicting Evans in the series, where the figure is shown in a suit with a floppy bow tie, sitting in a modernist tubular steel chair. Here the portrait has been stripped of context, beyond the wall that supports the sitter, and we are made to focus instead on his delicately rendered features.