Date	Friday 16 June 2023
Time	18.30–19.30 BST (exhibition visit and refreshments until 20.45)
Location	At the Museum or Online (Zoom)
Speakers	Martin Gayford, in conversation with Dr Xavier Bray

Join acclaimed writer and art critic Martin Gayford as he discusses his encounters with Freud and Hockney. In conversation with Dr Xavier Bray, Director of the Wallace Collection, Gayford will reveal how he sat for both Lucian Freud and David Hockney, and how he became well acquainted with their canine companions.  

Includes refreshments and the opportunity to visit our Portraits of Dogs: From Gainsborough to Hockney exhibition.   

About the speaker: Martin Gayford is an art critic and the author of acclaimed biographical studies of Michelangelo, John Constable and Vincent van Gogh. He has also been curator of several exhibitions, including Hockney’s Eye at the Fitzwilliam Museum and Downing College, Cambridge and Lucian Freud: The Painter and his Family at the Freud Museum, London.  

He sat for portraits by both Hockney and Lucian Freud, the latter experience being the subject of his book Man with a Blue Scarf (2010). His other publications, a survey of painting in London after the Second World War entitled Modernists and Mavericks and The Pursuit of Art, a collection of travels and interviews. A History of Pictures was co-written with David Hockney and has also written A Bigger Message, a volume of conversations with Hockney.  

Among his other books, Shaping the World: Sculpture from Prehistory to Now (2020) is a collaboration with Antony Gormley, while Spring Cannot Be Cancelled, co-written with David Hockney, appeared in 2021. His most recent book is Love Lucian (2022), a collection of Lucian Freud’s early correspondence, co-edited with David Dawson.  

Take part at the Museum: Join us at the museum for this special talk and exhibition visit.     

Watch Online: This talk will also be broadcast live from the museum. Online ticketholders will be emailed a link to join 24 hours in advance. Online ticketholders will also receive a link to view a recording of the talk, which will be available for two weeks.   

Please note that this event was previously titled Dogs (and Other Animals) in the Work of Freud and Hockney.

Image Credit: David Hockney, Dog Painting 19, 1995 © David Hockney. Photo Credit: Richard Schmidt Collection The David Hockney Foundation