A POPULAR self portrait of Bradford artist David Hockney will be loaned to a city gallery as part of a national programme to return pieces of art to the places that inspire them.

Self-Portrait with Charlie will go on display at Cartwright Hall, a Bradford Council run art gallery in Lister Park, where the artist often visited as a child and budding artist.

Coming Home is a project by the National Portrait Gallery that will also see a 16th century portrait of Richard III loaned to the New Walk Museum and Art Gallery in Leicester and a portrait of Yorkshire M.P., William Wilberforce loaned to the Ferens Art Gallery in Hull.

Last year Cartwright Hall opened a dedicated Hockney Gallery to mark the artist's 80th birthday, and it is currently displaying My Parents, which is on loan from The Tate.

The gallery features work from throughout his career, and has been credited with a huge increase in visitors to Cartwright Hall in the past year.

Helen Thornton, manager at Cartwright Hall, said: ‘It is exciting and appropriate that a David Hockney self-portrait picture will be shown here at Cartwright Hall Art Gallery at our new David Hockney Gallery."

Coming Home will see the Gallery working with local museums and galleries to help choose portraits that are special to them, providing communities across the country with the opportunity to celebrate their local heroes.

The Gallery has already returned the only known surviving portrait of Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë together to its original home at the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth.

The painting is on display until August 31 as part of the celebrations marking the 200th anniversary of Emily Brontë’s birth.