HOMAGE TO MICHELANGELO

Copper plate etching and aquatint printed in black and red on Rives BFK mould-made paper. The dedication copy. Presented, signed and inscribed by the artist to Vera Russell, who served as the model for both of the two women who are seen walking towards each other, with designs referencing the sketches of Michelangelo and words from T. S. Eliot's poem 'The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock' on the wall behind them. Printed by Atelier Crommelynk, Paris. The plate measures 46 x 67.5cm, the sheet measures 59.5 x 79.5cm. Window mounted and framed in gilt and bamboo under glass. The frame, measuring 95 x 120cm, is contemporary to the presentation, and is almost certainly of the artist's choosing. In fine condition, the print bright, the paper and window mount with some very faint and infrequent speckling. A monumental signed print that beautifully displays Hockney's skill whilst also presenting a unique record of the relationship between artist and sitter and, even more significantly, the close friendship between Hockney and an unsung champion of British art, Vera Russell.

Signed and dated in pencil by David Hockney to the bottom right of the print, further inscribed in pencil along the bottom of the print "for Vera with much love and appreciation (for posing). David. xx". Numbered two of twenty artist's proofs, outside of and edition of 200. Created for 'Omaggio a Michelangelo', a portfolio of prints by various artists inspired by Michelangelo, issued on the occasion of the artist's 500th birthday by Studio Bruckmann, Munich. The recipient, Vera Russell (née Poliakoff, 1911-1992), was a close friend of the artist and a significant figure in the contemporary British art scene. She was born in St. Petersberg and moved to Britain with her family in early childhood. She worked as an actress (under the stage name Vera Lindsay) on London stages throughout the 1930s and appeared in a small number of films, including 'Spellbound' (1941), and in the 1940s she embarked upon a brief career as a war reporter. By the 1960s Russell was married to the art critic John Russell and was firmly embedded within the art world, earning a reputation as an influential tastemaker and patron of the arts. She was known for her impeccable eye and her tough, exacting character – the art critic William Packer described her as "redoubtable", and the novelist Francis King stated that "she was both a remarkable and a difficult woman. Had she not been difficult, she would not have been so remarkable". Russell ran a series of galleries in co-operation with her artist friends and colleagues in Covent Garden, London, from the early 1970s. She was notable as one of the few gallery directors and curators to champion unknown and experimental artists, as well as established artists such as David Hockney and Robert Medley, at a time when arts funding was notoriously unstable. Russell was incredibly well connected; her address book includes details of famous ballet dancers, novelists, composers, socialites and royals, though her relationships with visual artists remain the most significant. Russell maintained lengthy, close correspondences with many groundbreaking artists including Hockney, Francis Bacon and Henry Moore. Hockney made several artworks of and dedicated to her, and his letters to her are written with a marked fondness and openness, addressed always to 'Dearest Vera'. Russell's obituary in The Times astutely states that she was "the great unknown factor without whose subterraneous workings the face of British culture would surely have been radically different". (SAC 173; Tokyo 162).