Drawing from Life — David Hockney — ( National Portrait Gallery, 2020)

A tender and analytical survey of intimate portraiture, Drawing from Life gathers over six decades of David Hockney’s drawing practice into one striking volume. Published to accompany a major retrospective at the National Portrait Gallery, this hardcover compendium moves from the 1950s to the 2020s through the faces that populated Hockney’s personal universe — his mother Laura, curator Gregory Evans, master printer Maurice Payne, and his muse Celia Birtwell — all traced through the artist’s evolving line and changing techniques. From spare, economical pencil studies to lush coloured pencil drawings and lo-fi Polaroid compositions, the book testifies to Hockney’s relentless curiosity about likeness, intimacy, and time.

What anchors this volume is its quiet insistence on drawing as a way of being with someone. Hockney’s devotion to the drawn line — whether in Paris in the '70s, LA in the '80s, or Yorkshire during a reflective self-portrait phase — unfolds here not as style, but as attention. It’s this attention, rendered in 150 full-page reproductions, that elevates the book above a career overview and into something closer to an emotional archive.

A Darwin object for its economy, directness, and the way it quietly chronicles love, time and artistic risk, one sitter at a time.

Technical Sheet
Title: Drawing from Life
Artist / Author: David Hockney
Date: 2020
Technique / Printing Method: Offset
Medium / Materials: Hardcover
Dimensions (cm): 25.7 × 26
Language: English
Pages: 208
Publisher / Editor: National Portrait Gallery, London
ISBN: 978-1855147973
Condition: NEW