<b>David Hockney</b>

(2009) 

 

 Writing in The Guardian, Adrian Searle spoke of the next landscape as having ‘an almost surreal and visionary delight’, culminating in...

'''...a painting so over the top...that it looks as though giant caterpillars were climbing all over a kind of mad topiary, beneath a roaring Van Goghish sky. I wish more works could be as crazy as this: Hockney captures and amplifies something of the astonishment of hawthorns in bloom.'[Adrian Searle] 

It is a very weird painting."

https://gerryco23.wordpress.com/2012/02/25/david-hockney-a-bigger-picture/
https://arthur.io/art/david-hockney/may-blossom-on-the-roman-road

May Blossom on the Roman Road
2009
Oil on 8 canvases 
91.5 x 122 each (182.8 x 244 overall)
Private collection
Exhibited at the Foundation Louis Vuitton in 2025
https://www.pacegallery.com/journal/david-hockney-fondation-louis-vuitton/

 

 

 David Hockney
(2008) 
 

Painted from memory, with brighter colours and broader outlines, Hawthorn Blossom Near Rudston 2008 takes on a different, more surreal character from the Yorkshire works painted outdoors, with the form, colours and perspectives simplified as the artist allowed his imagination to fill the canvas. 

Hawthorn blossom near Rudston
2008
Oil on 2 canvasses 
(Each 152.4 x 122 cm ) Overall 152.4 x 244cm
Private collection

 David Hockney
(2005) 
 

Today one of the Yorkshire landscapes that is not of monumental size

Tree tunnel, August 2005
Oil on canvas
61 x 91cm
Private collection


David Hockney
(2009)
 

The monumental scale of these landscapes results in a paintings that emits the palpable sense of the dramatic beauty that Hockney saw in the Yorkshire landscape. 

In this case, depicting a copse of majestic, tall trees, a series of strong verticals dominate the upper portion of the canvases. The fastidious nature of these solid upright forms is disrupted only by delicate branches that emerge from the trunks at acute angles. In the middle-ground, this verticality is contrasted by the horizontal arrangement of the freshly felled trees that lie to the side of the country lane, their pale color contrasting with the dark tomes of their living counterparts. The foreshortening of their limbs acts to draw the eye into the composition, contrasting with the dominant vertical of the totemic trees (as Hockney termed them) such as the one that stands guard over its fallen comrades. Finally, the gentle curve of the country lane as it sweeps through the composition offsets and softens the strict rigidity of the rest of the overall composition.

https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-6397134

Winter Timber
2009
Oil on canvas in 15 parts
Overall: 274.3 x 609.6 cm
Private collection (Sold by Christie’s on 9 Nov 2022)
https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-6397134

 David Hockney
(2006) 
 

Throughout 2006, Hockney executed a limited series of paintings of the Woldgate Woods in his native Yorkshire, charting the changes in light and colour as the seasons passed. Limited by the size of the canvas he was able to fit through the staircase at his Bridlington studio, he devised a method of using multiple canvases in order to achieve the desired scale. Woldgate Woods, 24, 25 and 26 October 2006, capturing the autumnal colors of East Yorkshire, is composed using six of these canvases. The huge public and critical success of this body of work has led to this quiet corner in the north east of England becoming known as ‘Hockney Country’, with the local tourist board even creating a Hockney Trail inspired by the locations immortalized in the series.

Woldgate Woods 24, 25, and 26 October 2006
Oil on canvas, in six parts
182.9 x 365.7 cm
Private collection (Sold by Sotheby’s 2016)
https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2016/contemporary-art-evening-auction-n09572/lot.43.html

 <b>David Hockney</b>
(2007) 
 

 For the next work, Hockney travelled in a pickup and with his assistant to Warter so as to paint on site over a period of three weeks. The artist could only work simultaneously on six canvases outdoors, and in his studio in Bridlington he could only observe a maximum of ten of the 50 canvases that make up this work at one time. For which reason he used a computer to verify whether the different images fit together and to record the painting’s progress.

https://www.hockney2022.ch/en/hockney/landschaft/

Bigger trees Near Warter
2007
Oil on 50 canvases 
91 x 122 cm (each) 457 x 1219 cm overall
Private collection
https://www.hockney2022.ch/en/hockney/landschaft/

 David Hockney
(1998) 
 

 David Hockney first gained recognition for his Pop Art paintings, drawings and prints in the 1960s, but he has also considered the traditional subject of landscape throughout his career. 

In the 1990s he returned to his native Yorkshire and was inspired by the countryside, yet interpreted it with an acknowledgment of early 20th century artists. The vibrant palette and bold brushstrokes of this work recall Matisse and Van Gogh rather than the meticulously rendered compositions typical of his own earlier work. The high horizon and distant patchwork of the Yorkshire moors suggest the artist's view was from a striking and distant vantagepoint.

Garrowby Hill
1998
Oil on canvas
152 x 193cm 
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
https://collections.mfa.org/objects/51520/garrowby-hill;jsessionid=58A8D3EF9CFCDBC3D7097EDE1E1D58C4?ctx=9b446654-2f08-40e1-8541-aa6c0055177b&idx=5