Hockney, David
The novelist Christopher Isherwood (1904-86) was educated at Repton College and at Corpus Christi, Cambridge, and taught in Germany from 1930 to 1933. His best known novels, Mr Norris Changes Trains (1935) and Goodbye to Berlin (1939), were based on his experiences of pre-Hilter Berlin and later inspired John Van Druten's play, I Am a Camera, which was later turned into the musicial Cabaret. He emigrated to California to work as a Hollywood scriptwriter in 1939, and became a US citizenin 1946. David Hockney admired Isherwood as an author and, when he was their neighbour in California, became a close friend of Isherwood and his partner, the artist Don Barchady. The setting for this double portrait is Isherwood's living room in his home at 145 Adelaide Drive, Santa Monica. Hockney took many photographs of his sitters, made this compositional sketch and some pencil drawings and finished the oil painting in 1968.
Study for 'Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy'
1968