08/03/2026
For International Women’s Day, we’re looking at Celia Birtwell — artist, designer, collaborator, and one of the most enduring presences in David Hockney’s portraiture.
Best known to many through Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy, Birtwell was never simply a sitter. Her prints, style, intelligence, and long friendship with Hockney helped shape some of the most recognisable images in modern British art.
Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy is widely seen as a glamorous society portrait.
But it is quietly radical.
Hockney deliberately places Celia at the compositional and psychological centre of the painting. She stands upright, self-possessed and emotionally assured, while Ossie sits lower, turned inward. Through posture, spacing, and gaze, the traditional balance of marital portraiture is subtly reversed.
She is not ornamental.
She anchors the composition.
What many don’t realise is that Birtwell’s textile designs, colour sense, and pattern language actively shaped the pictorial atmosphere of Hockney’s work. Her dresses were never incidental — they introduced rhythm, surface, and visual complexity that became structural elements within the compositions.
You’re not just looking at Celia.
You’re seeing Celia’s design mind inside the picture.
She stands not behind the image, but powerfully within it.
