In the autumn of 1983, almost every day for two months, Hockney challenged himself to produce a candid self-portrait in charcoal. This period of intense self-reflection was, in part, a reaction to the untimely deaths of many of his friends due to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The vulnerability exposed in these drawings is a far cry from the confident self-portraits of thirty years earlier. Like the pages of a diary, these works record daily changes in the artist’s moods and emotions.

In 1986, while working on designs for a production of Wagner’s opera Tristan and Isolde, Hockney began experimenting with a color laser photocopier to produce what he called "home-made prints." Replicating the traditional printmaking process, he repeatedly fed a single sheet of paper through the copier until each color of the drawing had been printed. In this self-portrait, he even placed his own striped shirt on the glass plate of the copier. Though created with modern technology, the prints have a playful directness that reveals the artist’s hand.

The inscription on this sheet explains the artist’s weary look. Hockney, who lived in Los Angeles at the time, drew this self-portrait on the day the powerful Northridge earthquake struck the San Fernando Valley, northwest of the city—one of the most devastating earthquakes in United States history.

Hockney has always made candid self-portraits in moments of introspection, tracking his own aging process. These playful drawings in which he displays different facial expressions, influenced by Rembrandt’s self-portrait etchings, can be seen as precursors to the iPad self-portraits.

The presence of the mirror frame in this drawing recalls a typical composition of Renaissance portraits in which the sitter is shown beyond a window ledge. Inspired by the extensive research he was conducting at the time into old master methods—notably the use of lenses and mirrors—Hockney adopted here the classical bust-length pose that is found in portraiture throughout European art history.

In the spring of 2019, Hockney traveled to Amsterdam for the opening of Hockney – Van Gogh: The Joy of Nature, an exhibition at the Van Gogh Museum. While there, he fell in love with Rembrandt again. Later that year, with Rembrandt and Van Gogh on his mind, and spurred by the prospect of the present exhibition, Hockney invited Celia, Gregory, and Maurice to sit for a new drawing series. In these three-quarter-length portraits, he paid particular attention to faces and hands, often his starting point. Drawn in Los Angeles and Normandy, where Hockney had recently moved, the portraits are fond evocations of time spent together and represent the many familiar faces and expressions of his old friends. Using Japanese brushes with integral reservoirs and the walnut-brown ink favored by Rembrandt, Hockney achieved an uninterrupted line and built up the portraits in three different tones.