Maggi & Henrietta : drawings of Henrietta Moraes

'I re-met Henrietta on 4th February, 1998, two days after my Father's funeral, at the end of a dinner following the Francis Bacon opening at the Hayward Gallery in London.

Those eyes had first blazed through mine across a large Boxing Day lunch in Wiltshire five years earlier...' Henrietta Moraes, muse, writer and Queen of Bohemia, was a model for some of the most famous artists of our time, amongst them Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon.

In the last year of her tempestuous life she was painted and drawn by the artist Maggi Hambling. 'However arthritic or, on occasion, hung over, she gallantly climbed onto the table to pose: raw, intense, vulnerable and commanding.

I became her subject rather than she mine. Her inspiration for me was a powerful mixture of attack, encouragement and wit' Maggi and Henrietta is an extraordinary series of charcoal drawings and words which captures the essence of their friendship.

It is both specific and yet has much to say about the relationship between artist and model.

Tender, funny, and moving, this is a unique book about art, and about love.The publication will coincide with the exhibition Henrietta Moraes by Maggi Hambling - drawings, paintings and bronzes at Marlborough Fine Art (London), October 3rd to 28th.