David Hockney
(1969)

A masterpiece of pictorial drama from the collection of Barney A. Ebsworth, Henry Geldzahler and Christopher Scott stands among the great icons of David Hockney’s oeuvre. Monumentally scaled and intimately observed, it is a glowing meditation on human and visual relationships, set within a panoramic theatre of colour and form. Hockney’s closest friend Henry Geldzahler – the legendary curator, critic and king of the New York art world – dominates the centre of the composition, framed by the city’s skyscrapers. Christopher Scott, his then-boyfriend, hovers to the right like a fleeting apparition. Completed in 1969, it is the third work in the career-defining series of seven double portraits that Hockney created between 1968 and 1975. With four held in museum collections, these extraordinary seven-by-ten-foot canvases represent the culmination of the artist’s naturalistic style, initiated in his Californian swimming pool paintings of the mid-1960s. 

https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-6191950

Henry Geldzahler and Christopher Scott
1969
Acrylic on canvas
214 x 305
Private collection (Sold by Christie’s on 6 March 2016)
https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-6191950

 David Hockney
(1968)
 

Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy is an acrylic on canvas portrait by the English artist David Hockney, from 1968. It is a joint depiction of the writer Christopher Isherwood and his partner, the painter Don Bachardy. 
It was the first in a series of seven double portraits that Hockney executed between 1968 and 1975. It was part of a private collection for 40 years before its sale at auction at Christie's in New York City on 17 November 2025 for $44.3 million. It has been displayed at many of Hockney's retrospectives.

Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy
1968
Acrylic on canvas
212 x 303.5 cm
Private collection (Sold by Christie’s on 17 November 2025)
https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-6559891?ldp_breadcrumb=back

 David Hockney
(1985)

Moving Focus, Hockney’s series of prints made with master printer Ken Tyler from 1984-1987, reflect the enduring influence of cubism on the artist, in particularly the work of Picasso, as well as an enthusiasm for Chinese scroll painting, with which Hockney had become fascinated.
Hockney had discovered the Hotel Romano Angeles in the small town of Acatlán, Hidalgo Province, by accident after his car had broken down on a trip from Mexico City to Oaxaca. Arranged around a courtyard with tropical plants and a well at its centre, it’s rustic charm and colour had immediately appealed to the artist. On his return to Los Angeles Hockney contacted Ken Tyler to enlist his help. Tyler proposed a new lithographic method which he had recently developed, the mylar technique. Using prepared sheets of the semi-transparent plastic the technique allowed Hockney to overlay colour drawings, simulating the colour separation necessary for colour lithography, and to visualise the final effect, something which had not hitherto been possible. This was liberating for a colourist like Hockney, and the Hotel Acatlán prints are some of the most vibrant in his graphic oeuvre. 

https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-6306749

Hotel Acatlán: First Day, from Moving Focus
1985
Lithograph in colors, on two sheets of TGL handmade paper
73 x 188.6 cm
Private collection (Sold by Christie’s on 10 March 2021)
https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-6306749

 <b>David Hockney</b>
(1978)

In August 1978, Hockney establishes Los Angeles as his permanent place of residence. That same month, he visits Bedford, in upstate New York, to work with printer Ken Tyler on the shoes Paper Pools, made using an innovative process of moulding and pressing coloured paper pulp according to the layouts of compositions of shimmering swimming pools. 

https://www.thedavidhockneyfoundation.org/chronology/1978

A Large Diver (Paper Pool 27)
1978
colored and pressed paper pulp
198 ,4 x 458.5 cm
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
https://www.sfmoma.org/artwork/79.18.A-L/

 David Hockney
(1966

”I had become interested in the more general problem of painting the water, finding a way to do it. T is an interesting formal problem, really, apart from its subject matter; it is a formal problem to represent water, to describe water, because it can be anything—it can be any colour, it’s movable, it has no set visual description; I just used my drawings for these paintings and my head invented.”

David Hockney

Sunbather
1966
Acrylic on canvas
182 x 182 cm
Museum Ludwig, Köln
https://museum-ludwig.kulturelles-erbe-koeln.de/documents/obj/05010046

 David Hockney
(1972)
 

The next work brings together two of Hockney's themes from his paintings of the late 1960s and early 1970s: the swimming pool, and the double portrait. It depicts a male figure in white trunks swimming underwater, and the painter Peter Schlesinger, Hockney's former lover and muse, fully clothed and standing at the edge of the pool looking down at the swimmer. The painting is set in southern France, near Saint-Tropez. In characteristic Hockney style, the foreground is simplified and flattened with a view of tree-clad hills in the background. The composition was inspired by a serendipitous combination of photographs that Hockney noticed on his studio floor: one of a man swimming underwater, taken in California in 1966, and the other of a man standing looking at the ground. Juxtaposed, it appeared as if the standing person were looking at the swimmer.

Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)
1972
Acrylic on canvas
213.5 x 305 cm
Private collection (Sold at Christie's in November 2018 for $90.3 million, at that time the highest price ever paid at auction for a painting by a living artist. )
https://www.christies.com/en/stories/david-hockney-portrait-of-an-artist-pool-with-two-figures-fc646a8d6dfb4ea98814460d351e485b

 David Hockney
(1967)
 

Painted in 1967, A Bigger Splash is perhaps David Hockney's best-known artwork. What is it that makes this painting so iconic and seductive – and still very modern-looking fifty years after it was made?
The painting depicts a sun-drenched swimming pool in Los Angeles. Behind the pool is a pink modernist building and an empty chair. The silhouettes of neighbouring buildings are reflected in the building’s large window. Two spindly palm trees and a neat border of grass suggest carefully manicured gardens. Unusually for Hockney's paintings from this time, there is no-one in sight and the scene is almost entirely still … apart from the splash.

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/hockney-a-bigger-splash-t03254/understanding-david-hockneys-bigger-splash

A bigger splash
1967
Acrylic paint on canvas
242 x 243 cm 
Tate, London
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/hockney-a-bigger-splash-t03254