Bradford-born artist David Hockney today spoke movingly about the influence of his mother who has died, aged 98.

"She was a very powerful influence in my life. She waited for my brother John to arrive from Australia before she died: her last act of will. She died very calm, of old age, nothing specific.

"She was a remarkable woman, principled and strong and yet full of kindness. Some people think kindness is a weakness; she thought it was a virtue," he said.

Bradford's former Lord Mayor Paul Hockney, who now lives with his wife Jean in Flamborough, was at his mother's side when she died.

"She mumbled something as though she was singing a hymn or saying a prayer and then she was gone," he said.

Laura Hockney was born in Bradford and spent more than 90 years of her life in the city - 50 of them at the last family home in Hutton Terrace, Eccleshill.

She was a Sunday school teacher at Bradford's Eastbrook Hall, which is where she met Kenneth Hockney. They married in 1929 and between 1931 and 1939 had five children: Paul, Philip, Margaret, David and John. David used her as a model for many of his pen and ink drawings which are still displayed at Salts Mill in Saltaire.

"My parents really struggled to make sure all their children got a good education. My mother used to make all our clothes. She did lots of baking and spent all her time looking after her kids. She liked nothing better than having all her children round her," Paul added.

For the last 20 years Mrs Hockney was a widow; Kenneth died at the age of 74 in 1979. But she saw a lot of her most famous son, David, both here in Yorkshire and in Hollywood, California, where he has lived since the late 1970s.

"All my life I have known where she was. In that sense she was an old-fashioned mother. I could always get her on the phone," he said.

"She was one of the last Victorians. She was born three months before Queen Victoria died in 1901. Her eyes saw most of the 20th century. She had a rich and long life.

"Until about six months ago she was still lucid: I would play Scrabble with her and she would win."

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