Celia Birtwell is a successful fashion and textile designer (her latest collection sold out at Top Shop in ten minutes), but she has modeled regularly for her friend David Hockney over the years. As a result, his 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 still and patiently for hours while I was drawn or painted. In the early seventies, I found out. Peter Schlesinger, David Hockney’s ex-boyfriend, used to be a talented painter, but has since become a successful sculptor. I am the oldest of three girls and initially, I wanted to paint a portrait of all of us together. Peter started drawing us all in David Hockney’s studio and was quite excited at first, especially since my middle sister was wearing a Herbert Johnson feathered bell hat that she had bought especially for the occasion. Unfortunately, my sisters started arguing during the session and refused to sit together, so Peter scrapped the idea of drawing us. But, a few years later, he asked me to pose just for him. At that time, my aunt in Beverly Hills had just sent me a knee-length green leopard print Diana von Furstenberg wrap dress, which I therefore wore everywhere. I even once wore it to a charity ball where all the other women were embalmed in designer brand ball gowns, and some of them even had tiaras on their heads.
I was excited that Peter wanted to draw me, but I found sitting for him to be 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 stood on my head without bothering to remove my pink Manolo skyscraper high-heeled shoes. But the sharp boredom was worth it. He did a wonderful painting of me in the green leopard skin dress, and it is currently hanging 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 movie stills in the world, visited them once in New York and so admired the painting that Peter offered to sell it to him. Although John was one of my best friends, I didn’t think Peter’s asking price was worth it.
I also wore green leopard skin religiously 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 chaise longue and captured me perfectly. I was young at that time and I was quite absent in the drawing. Adrian was my Svengali at the time. He even helped me get a job as a gossip columnist for 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 a job for Alice, the book’s heroine, who was true to life.
However, I was not Adrian George’s only protégé. He had an inner circle of his disciples and he drew them all at one point or another. His merchant used to whip his things, but luckily, he gave me the drawing of myself on the deck chair, which today hangs on my office wall. Adrian also drew Marinka, a great model of a professional artist. She was pretty as a box of chocolates and had a voluptuous body that artists loved to paint. When she wasn’t sitting for Adrian, she regularly sat 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 sit like a statue immobile for hours, while drawing me, was definitely the most boring job in the world, although I tried to console myself when I did it, I was posing for posterity.
Copyright: 2006
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