Paintings of paintings
Stevens’s meditation on Picasso’s painting The Old Guitarist (1903–04) leads Hockney to paint additional reflections in his London painting studio, resulting in Model with Unfinished Self Portrait, which shows Gregory Evans lying asleep in front of Self Portrait with Blue Guitar.
My self portrait, which was not finished at the time, was leaning against the wall of my London studio. Gregory posed on a bed in front of it and a great deal of his figure was painted from life. That gave it a kind of power. It looks as though it’s a painting of two completely different kinds of space. It seems as if there’s a stage behind Gregory with a curtain. The curtain has been pulled back and there I am, about to draw a guitar.