AND PERCY

See Also: CLOTHES DESIGNERS Vivienne Westwood; GALLERIES Tate Britain

The painting Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy (1971) holds a strong attraction for many visitors to Tate Britain. The picture's subjects - Celia Birtwell and Ossie Clark¹ - first encountered one another while they were teenagers attending art schools in Manchester. Subsequently, the latter was admitted to the postgraduate fashion design course that was taught at the Royal College of Art. The Bradford-born artist David Hockney was a graduate of the institution's painting department. The two northern men met in 1961. They soon appreciated that they shared a range of interests and became close friends.

Clark introduced Birtwell to Hockney. The latter came to respect her visual judgement. They developed a close rapport with one another. In part, this was because they had both grown up with idiosyncratic fathers. The misapprehensions that hers had laboured under had included the belief that his singing voice was of operatic quality.

Clark had a strong appreciation of architectural form. This helped him to develop into being an exceptional pattern cutter. The boutique owner Alice Pollock invited him to make dresses that she could sell in Quorum, her shop in Chelsea.² Birtwell's approach to design was essentially two-dimensional. In 1966 Ms Pollock saw some of her textile prints and suggested to Clark that he should experiment with them. The patterns proved to be able to give his structures an additional allure. He and Birtwell swiftly became celebrated figures of 1960s London. Clark was an innovator with regard to fashion shows. It was he who made the use of music integral to them. He was the first designer in Britain to employ black women as runway models.

Birtwell and Clark married one another in 1969; Hockney was the best man at the wedding. The couple tended not to speak to one another about some matters, notably their work. Among the interests that they did share were their children and the furnishing of their Notting Hill flat. It was there that Hockney set Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy. The 2.17m x 3.084m acrylic picture was one of a series of near life-size double portraits of friends and relatives that the artist had started in 1968. The subjects were all posed in their home environments.

The couple's positions differ from those that would be expected of a man and a woman in a painting that was informed by a Classical outlook. Usually, the woman would sit and the man would stand. It has been reported that Birtwell has expressed the view that the composition reflected what the artist took to be the dynamic of her and her husband's relationship at that juncture.

The cat in the picture was called Blanche. She was Birtwell's favourite feline. However, Hockney was of the opinion that the name Percy, which was borne by one of the queen's sons, was more euphonious. Therefore, it was incorporated into the work's title. The piece was acquired by the Tate Gallery in 1971.³

One of the principal models for the painting is Jan van Eyck's The Arnolfini Marriage (1434). In it, there is a small dog that represents fidelity. In Mr and Mrs Clark , the presence of Percy on Mr Clark's lap can be interpreted symbolically - as indicating a wilful libertine. This point is underscored by the fact that one of Hockney's A Rake's Progress (1961-3) etchings has been hung on one of the room's walls. By contrast, the lilies, to the fore of Birtwell, can be taken to represent feminine purity. She had long appreciated that her husband was bisexual. Their relationship was a love affair. However, it proved to be one that eventually ran its course. The couple divorced in 1975.

Clark s designs were informed by a lyrical romanticism. The transient nature of fashion meant that this style increasingly fell out of favour as the 1970s progressed. Concurrently, his temperament led him to increasingly allow a disordered hedonistic lifestyle to sideline his talents. While his abilities continued to be admired within the garment industry, he became a figure who was evermore marginal to it. In 1996 his personal chaos finally consumed him. He was murdered in his flat in a less salubrious section of Notting Hill than the one in which his marital home had been located.

Location: Quorum, 52 Radnor Walk, SW3 4BN (blue, grey)

71 Westbourne Park Road, W2 5QH. (blue, yellow) In 1984 Birtwell opened the shop

Website: www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/hockney-mr-and-mrs-clark-and-percy-t01269 www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/hockney-study-for-mr-and-mrs-clark-and-percy-t01517

¹. Mr Clark acquired his nickname Ossie from having been brought up in Oswaldtwistle in Lancashire.

². David Gilmour, later of the band Pink Floyd, drove Quorum's delivery van for a while.

³. Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy is usually to be found in Tate Britain. However, sometimes the work is placed in storage and it has been exhibited elsewhere.

David Backhouse 2024