Portraits of personality: Hockney holds court at the RA

In 2013, after eight years back in his native Yorkshire, Britain’s greatest living painter, David Hockney, returned to Los Angeles, his adopted home for thirty years. He’d suffered a stroke. He was in low spirits. One of his assistants had died after drinking acid at his home in Bridlington. Hockney was devastated. For several months he was unable to paint at all.

Then, in July 2013, Hockney sent a picture to his friend and curator, Edith Devaney. It was a portrait of his studio manager, J-P Goncalves de Lima, sitting in Hockney’s LA studio, his head buried in his hands.

Devaney spotted the similarity with Van Gogh’s Old Man In Sorrow. This wasn’t just a portrait, Hockney told her, it was a sort of self-portrait too.

A month later, Hockney sent Edith another picture, a portrait of the American artist Bing McGilvray. This time, you could see his face. Next month Hockney painted another portrait, then another, and then another.

Now you can see 82 of these portraits (and one still-life) at London’s Royal Academy. It’s a show that charts Hockney’s journey from grief back into life.

At first glance, these 82 portraits all seem very similar. They’re all painted in bright acrylic, against the same blue backdrop. Each subject is sitting in the same chair.

Yet this uniform framework actually heightens the differences between them. With no superficial variations to distract you, the unique character of each of Hockney’s sitters shines through.

The portraits are hung in the order they were painted, from July 2013 to March 2016. They’re all people Hockney knows well. With each portrait, the procedure was the same.

Each person was invited to sit for three days, in Hockney’s sunlit studio in Los Angeles. They were all painted on the spot, with no preparatory drawings or subsequent refinement. This spontaneity is what makes them feel so fresh and lively. It’s astonishing what subtlety Hockney achieves with such a bold and simple style.

One of the most striking pictures in the show is a portrait of Edith Devaney, the show’s curator.

‘I don’t think I’ve ever witnessed anyone concentrating to that extent before,’ she tells me, recalling how it felt to sit for him. ‘The level of engagement is total.’ She’d known Hockney for many years, but sitting for him was a lot more intense. ‘It’s a very intimate experience.’

‘Do you think you’ve got me?’ she asked him, when they viewed her finished portrait together. ‘I’ve got an aspect of you,’ he replied. There’s no cruelty, or kindness. Like all great portrait painters, he simply paints what he sees.

‘This is people as they are – all of their frailties and all of their anxieties, all of their strengths and weakness,’ says Devaney. ‘It becomes a celebration of those things that make us individuals and make us different.’

This exhibition doubles as a portrait of Hockney himself, a compendium of all the people in his life.

‘He’s the common denominator – he’s the person that links all of us. A lot of us know each other because we’re friends of David’s, but he’s the person that links us all together. It becomes an insight into his life – these are the people who are important to him.’

There are pictures of his family, his brother John and sister Margaret. There’s a picture of his friend and former lover Gregory Evans, arguably the great love of his life. There are figures from the art world: gallerist Larry Gagosian, architect Frank Gehry, publisher Benedikt Taschen…

However this isn’t just a parade of VIPs. Alongside stars like Barry Humphries (resplendent in fedora, spotted kipper tie and pink trousers) are portraits of Hockney’s housekeeper, his masseur and the man who comes to wash his car.

For longstanding fans of Hockney, there are some fascinating links with the past. There’s a portrait of Celia Birtwell, whom Hockney has painted many times, most notably in his masterpiece, Mr & Mrs Clark and Percy (Birtwell was previously married to fashion designer Ossie Clark).

Alongside his latest portrait of Celia hangs a portrait of her granddaughter, Isabella Clark. ‘He’s trained himself to see more and perceive more,’ says Devaney. ‘That’s one of the things that makes him remarkable. The other thing is his endless curiosity. He’s never followed any trend.’

Everyone will have a favourite portrait in this show. Mine is of the youngest sitter, Rufus Hale, the eleven year old son of the artist Tacita Dean. Rufus brought a notebook to the sittings and did some drawings of his own while Hockney painted him.

‘So, what do you think?’ asked the great artist, at the end of their three day session, as he showed the lad his portrait. ’You’ve missed the rubber on the end of my pencil,’ he replied.

And what about the one still life?

There’s a very simple explanation. Hockney was all set to paint one of these portraits when the sitter had to cancel at the last moment. But Hockney was geared up for a day’s painting, the adrenalin was pumping, so he simply painted a still life instead.