David Hockney
Who
Born on 9 July 1937 in Bradford, Yorkshire, he trained at Bradford School of Art and the Royal College of Art, moved to Los Angeles in 1964, and died at home in London on 11 June 2026, aged 88. Painter, draughtsman, printmaker and photographer, and from 2009 a prolific draughtsman on the iPad.
Why they matter
He made California look the way the world now imagines it - flat light, modernist houses, swimming pools, a splash hanging in the air - and he painted the people close to him in large double portraits that read like plays. He never stopped changing the tools: etchings in his twenties, photocollages from the early 1980s, iPad drawings in his seventies, and in 2001 a book, Secret Knowledge, arguing that Old Masters used lenses and mirrors to paint. In November 2018 Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) made him the most expensive living artist at auction at the time.
What to buy
Prints: Tate owns A Bigger Splash and Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy, and its shop sells giclee reproductions of both, printed in England - the best source, though both were out of stock when checked in September 2026, so watch for them to come back rather than buying an unlicensed copy. Books: Hockney's Pictures (Thames & Hudson, 496 pages) is his own survey of six decades, arranged by theme and updated with the iPad work; A History of Pictures, written with Martin Gayford, is the best book on how he thought. Originals: he was a printmaker all his life, with editions published by Editions Alecto, Petersburg Press, Gemini G.E.L. and Tyler Graphics, so genuine work does come up. The way in is single sheets from larger portfolios such as A Rake's Progress, early etchings, iPad prints issued in larger editions, and original exhibition posters, which are the lowest tier and in short supply. A genuine limited edition is signed in pencil, usually lower right, and numbered lower left; an unsigned, unnumbered "print" needs an explanation. Check it against the references - David Hockney Prints 1954-77 (Scottish Arts Council, 1979), the Tokyo Museum of Contemporary Art catalogue of 1954-1995 and the Tyler Graphics catalogue raisonne (1987) - and look for the publisher's blindstamp. The David Hockney Foundation does not issue certificates of authenticity, so provenance and edition records are all you have. With posters, the fake is the later reproduction sold as an original exhibition poster.
Notes
Tate holds A Bigger Splash, Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy, and Bigger Trees Near Warter. He spent 2019 to 2023 in Normandy drawing on the iPad before returning to London. A Rake's Progress, his etched series after Hogarth, dates from 1961-63. At the Royal College of Art in 1962 he was told he could not graduate without a life drawing of a live model, and painted Life Painting for a Diploma in protest.
Story
In 2007 Hockney set out to paint the biggest picture he had ever made, and to paint it outdoors. The subject was an ordinary stretch of Yorkshire landscape, trees near Warter, west of Bridlington. The finished painting is 4.6 by 12.2 metres, 15 feet by 40, and it was done en plein air, outdoors in front of the trees themselves.
Nobody can stand back from a 40-foot canvas in a field, so he did not use one. He painted on fifty separate panels. He made drawings first to decide where each panel sat in the whole, a computer-mosaic of the picture was made from them, and that let him step back virtually while standing in front of one panel at a time. Over six weeks he carried the panels out to the site and painted them there.
It was shown at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in 2007, and in April 2008 he gave it to Tate, along with two digital photographic versions at full size. The title spells out the point: Peinture sur le motif pour le nouvel age post-photographique - painting from life, for the new post-photographic age.
Key works
- A Rake's Progress (etchings) (1961-1963)
- A Bigger Splash (1967) - Tate, London
- Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy (1970-1971) - Tate, London
- Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) (1972)
- Bigger Trees Near Warter (2007) - Tate, London
In museum collections
- A Bigger Splash (1967)
Art UK ↗ - Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy (1971)
Art UK ↗ - Bigger Trees Near Warter (2007)
Art UK ↗ - In the dull village (1966)
National Gallery of Art ↗ ยท MoMA ↗ - American Collectors (Fred and Marcia Weisman) (1968)
Art Institute of Chicago ↗ - We Two Boys Together Clinging (1961)
Art UK ↗ - Henry with Tulips (1977)
National Gallery of Art ↗ - Celia - Adjusting Her Eyelash (1979)
National Gallery of Art ↗ - Celia - Reclining (1979)
National Gallery of Art ↗ - James (1995)
National Gallery of Art ↗ - A Lot More of Ann Combing Her Hair
National Gallery of Art ↗ - A Moving Still Life (1976)
National Gallery of Art ↗
See the work
Prints
Books
Originals
See also
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