He Enquired After The Quality
Signed Print

A man stands at a counter examining what appears to be a collection of scarves or scraps of material while the vendor looks at him expectantly, his suit jacket draped over one shoulder. The figures are picked out in fine lines, their outlines and features recalling Hockney’s sketches, here reproduced in etching. Behind the two men another one stands; seen through a window, he is shown reading a newspaper. There is a tension in the air as if this scene were just a front for a proposition, an anonymous encounter that could become something less transactional and more sensual at any moment. Entitled He Enquired After The Quality, the print belongs to the series Illustrations For Fourteen Poems By C.P. Cavafy which consists of thirteen etchings to accompany the Greek poet’s work. Each shows a scene of – or moments before – an erotic encounter, depicting the casual nature of homosexual assignations from the perspective of both spectator and interested party. The series was published in 1967, the same year Britain finally decrimilised homosexuality. In light of this, it can be read as a celebration of gay love, as well as a testament to the decades, if not centuries, of stigma and concealment.