Figure by a Curtain

Figure by a Curtain is based on the painting Play within a Play from 1963. 'The figure is a portrait of John Kasmin [Hockney's dealer]. Kas had always wanted me to paint him but I never got round to it as I couldn't really decide how to do it. Now it seemed appropriate to trap him in this small space between art and life'. Hockney was inspired by Domenichino's painting Apollo Killing Cyclops in the National Gallery, London, in which a dwarf is depicted standing before a tapestry depicting the mythological scene of the painting's title. 'It wasn't the subject matter from Greek mythology that interested me, but the fact that they really seemed like trompe l'oeil painting. They were paintings made to look like tapestries made from paintings, already a double level of reality'. The effect of Kasmin's nose and hands pressed up against the real glass of the glazed picture is suggested in the print with areas of screenprinted opaque white, which appear flat on an otherwise lithographic surface. (David Hockney by David Hockney, Thames & Hudson, London, 1976, p. 90).