number 26 of 250 copies of edition a, signed by hockney and with one signed loose etching entitled "Portrait of Cavafy II," from a total edition of 550. The first major series of etchings by Hockney since The Rake's Progress in 1963. Hockney's largest painting of 1961 was inspired by the words of the Greek poet Cavafy. In 1966, as Parliament passed an act decriminalizing homosexuality, the artist decided to illustrate a book of Cavafy's poems about gay love. He went to Beirut, which he felt was the modern equivalent of the writer's Alexandria, but based the etchings on his friends in Notting Hill, rather than directly to places or incidents in the poems. The translators and the artist together decided which print was to accompany each poem"--Castleman, 212; Scottish Arts Council 47-59; Manet to Hockney 137.