artist models

Celia Birtwell is a successful fashion and textile designer (her latest collection sold out at the Top Shop in ten minutes), but she has modeled regularly for her friend David Hockney over the years. As a result, her portraits of her hang in the homes of art collectors around the world. I often wondered what it would be like to have to sit patiently for hours while being painted or drawn. In the early seventies, I discovered it. Peter Schlesinger, David Hockney’s ex-boyfriend used to be a talented painter, but he has since become a successful sculptor. I am the oldest of three girls and initially wanted to paint a portrait of all of us together. Peter started drawing us all in David Hockney’s studio and at first he was quite excited, especially since my middle sister was wearing a Herbert Johnson feathered cloche hat that she had bought especially for the occasion. Unfortunately, my sisters started fighting during the shoot and refused to sit together, so Peter dropped the idea of ​​drawing us. But, a few years later, he asked me to pose for him alone. At the time, my aunt in Beverly Hills had just sent me a Diana von Furstenberg green leopard-print knee-length wrap dress, which I therefore wore everywhere. I even wore it once to a benefit ball where all the other women were embalmed in designer dresses, and some of them even had tiaras on their heads.

I was excited that Peter wanted to draw me, but I found out that posing for him was the deadliest job in the world. I sat in an uncomfortable chair in Hockney’s study for what seemed like hours, unable to move or speak. He allowed me to take breaks from time to time, so I went on my head without bothering to take off my pink Manolo skyscraper-style high heels. But, the acute boredom was worth it. He did a wonderful painting of me in the green leopard skin dress, and it currently hangs in his New York loft, which he shares with Eric Boman, the photographer and author of ‘Blahnik By Boman.’ The late John Kobal, the film historian, who had the largest collection of film stills in the world, once visited them in New York and admired the painting so much that Peter offered to sell it to him. Even though John was one of my best friends, I didn’t think Peter’s asking price was worth it.

I also religiously wore green leopard skin when I posed for Adrian George, the illustrator and painter in his Bayswater penthouse. Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough room to stand on my head there. Adrian once drew me sitting on a deckchair and he captured me perfectly. I was young at the time and I looked pretty empty in the drawing. Adrian was my Svengali at the time. He even helped me get a job as a gossip columnist at David Bailey’s Ritz newspaper in the late 1970s. Adrian also inspired me to invent a character named Jonti in “Frantic,” my novel about the early 1970s. Jonti got Alice, the heroine of the book, a job, which was true to life.

However, I was not the only protégé of Adrian George. He had an inner circle of his disciples and he attracted them all at one time or another. His dealer used to whip his stuff, but luckily he gave me the drawing of myself on the deckchair, which now hangs on my office wall. Adrian also drew a lot of Marinka, a professional artist model. She was pretty as a box of chocolates and she had a voluptuous body that artists loved to paint. When he wasn’t posing for Adrian, he regularly posed for other painters like Ron Kitaj. I don’t know how she had the patience to pose from nine to five, because I thought that having to stand still as a statue for hours, while she was being drawn, was definitely the most boring job in the world, although I did try to comfort myself when I did, I was posing for posterity.

Copyright: 2006