David Hockney sat for a portrait at Lucian Freud's home at 138 Kensington Church Street, Notting Hill, over a period of four months in 2002 (1). Maeve Kennedy of the Art Newspaper notes that 'Hockney did not come empty-handed to Freud's studio’ and during his visits made 'dozens of little pencil drawings' of his own from which he made a large watercolour of Freud and studio assistant David Dawson, back in his own London studio. So this colour photograph of the two painters together, taken by Dawson, (who is also a painter), is in effect one of three connected portraits.

Dawson, who now heads the Freud Archive, worked for the artist as both assistant and model over many years and, as such, was utterly at home in the space he photographs here. Reflecting on his time sitting for pictures Dawson recalls 'I really, really liked spending hours and hours in a painting studio with Lucian. The gentleness and the slowness of it all, is a very sympathetic way for you to daydream'.

1. Freud's portrait of Hockney recently changed hands at auction, selling at Sotheby's London in June 2021 for £ 14,905,200.