David Hockney
(1971)
 

Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy is an acrylic on canvas painting by the British artist David Hockney. Painted between 1970 and 1971, it depicts a couple, the fashion designer Ossie Clark and the textile designer Celia Birtwell in their flat in Notting Hill Gate, shortly after their wedding, with one of the couple's cats on Clark's knee. The white cat depicted in the painting was named Blanche; Percy was another of their cats, but Hockney thought "Percy" made a better title.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr_and_Mrs_Clark_and_Percy

Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy
1970-71
Acrylic on canvas
213 x 304 cm
Tate,  London
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/hockney-mr-and-mrs-clark-and-percy-t01269

 David Hockney
(1968)
 

An especially iconic example from the group of double portraits of friends and associates from the 196os. This painting depicts the contemporary-art collectors Fred and Marcia Weisman in the sculpture garden of their Los Angeles home. As stiff and still as the objects surrounding them, the couple stands apart, his stance echoed in the totem pole to the right, hers in the Henry Moore sculpture behind her. Brilliant light flattens the scene and sets the couple in sharp relief; they seem oblivious to each other as well as to their art.

https://www.artic.edu/artworks/102234/american-collectors-fred-and-marcia-weisman

American Collectors (Fred and Marcia Weisman)
1968
Acrylic on canvas
213.4 x 304.8 cm
Art Institute of Chicago
https://www.artic.edu/artworks/102234/american-collectors-fred-and-marcia-weisman

 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

David Hockney

(1968)

Before the famous double portraits and before some of the best-known pool paintings, Hockney occasionally turned his attention to the California coastline itself. In California Seascape the subject is deceptively simple: sea, sky and a distant horizon. Yet the painting captures something that fascinated him from the moment he arrived in Los Angeles—the extraordinary light, the sense of openness and the feeling that space stretches on forever. Sometimes a painting doesn't need much more than that.

California Seascape
1968
Acrylic on canvas
213 x 305 cm
Private collection

 David Hockney
(1964)
 

California Art Collector was the second painting by Hockney from his first, momentous visit to Los Angeles and is the first painting to convey the dramatic impact his new surroundings would have on his career. Hockney's choice of subject is only the most obvious development, as this new environment would also subtly affect his aesthetic choices of materials and technique. With this painting, Hockney first used acrylic paints and with a new sense of light and color, he depicted his first swimming pool while synthesizing his first impressions of the affluence and glamour of Beverly Hills.
 
https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2009/contemporary-art-evening-auction-n08592/lot.25.html

California Art Collector (1964)
1964
Acrylic on canvas
152 x 177cm
Private collection ( sold at Sotheby's, New York, November 10, 1993, Lot 31)
https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2009/contemporary-art-evening-auction-n08592/lot.25.html

David Hockney
(1967)
 

His seminal work, “A Lawn Being Sprinkled,” is a defining piece in his series of California Dreaming paintings. Created in 1967, this acrylic on canvas painting measures 60 x 60 inches and depicts an everyday scene in Los Angeles.
Hockney’s signature style lends itself perfectly to the subject matter, which includes an abstraction of Californian lifestyle through a perfectly tended lawn with a sprinkler creating v-shaped mists of water. The clear blue sky in the background gives the painting a serene feel while adding depth to the composition.

https://www.artchive.com/artwork/a-lawn-being-sprinkled-david-hockney-1967/

A Lawn Being Sprinkled
1967
Acrylic on Canvas
152.4 × 152.4 cm
Private collection (Sold by Christie’s, 16 May 2024)
https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-6482947

 David Hockney
(1966)

This painting won the John Moores Liverpool Exhibition 6 (now known as the John Moores Painting Prize) in 1967. It shows the communal swimming pool of an apartment block at 1145 Larrabee Street, Hollywood, just north of Sunset Boulevard. This was the home of one of Hockney's friends, the art dealer and gallery owner Nick Wilder. Hockney lived there from summer 1966 until early 1967 whilst at the same time renting a decrepit studio in central Los Angeles. Hockney’s boyfriend, Peter Schlesinger, a 19-year old painter whom he had met while teaching, is the naked figure climbing out of the pool.

https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/artifact/peter-getting-out-of-nicks-pool

Peter getting out of Nick’s Pool
1966
Acrylic on Canvas
152.4 x 152.4 cm
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool
https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/artifact/peter-getting-out-of-nicks-pool

David Hockney
(1967)


Increasingly, Hockney is preoccupied with that fundamental task of painting—how to represent light, specifically, to naturalistic effect. “The Room, Tarzana” is based on a department store’s advertisement for bedroom furniture, but Hockney re-envisions the sunlit scene to show Peter Schlesinger lying on his stomach on the natty made single bed, in T-shirt and socks, his bare buttocks exposed at the paintings centre.

https://www.thedavidhockneyfoundation.org/chronology/1967

The Room, Tarzana
1967
Acrylic on canvas
242.3 x 242.3 cm
Private collection

 David Hockney
(1964)

When Hockney went to Los Angeles in 1964, he was particularly fascinated by the use of water for irrigation and recreation in the semi-arid environment. He delighted in experimenting with various methods of depicting drops and sprays of water, attracted by the 'idea of painting moving water in a very slow and careful manner' (Stangos, p.99). He painted swimming pools and lawn sprinklers, but was equally intrigued by showers.
This painting includes some of the artist's favourite themes: moving water, the curtain, domestic scenes and homoerotic imagery. The curtain motif ( in particular, its flatness and similarities to a painting) had interested Hockney for several years. The source for the figure is a photograph taken by the Athletic Model Guild, which specialised in male nudes; the figure also has similarities to several images in Physique Pictorial. Hockney had intended from the beginning to add the foreground plant but, having difficulty with the feet, he bent the leaves to cover them. He began painting in acrylic during this first visit to Los Angeles, when colour rather than texture was his main concern.

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/hockney-man-in-shower-in-beverly-hills-t03074
Nikos Stangos (ed.), David Hockney by David Hockney, London 1976

Man in Shower in Beverly Hills
1964
Acrylic paint on canvas
167 x 167 cm
Tate, London
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/hockney-man-in-shower-in-beverly-hills-t03074

 David Hockney
(1961)

 Hockney’s infatuation with the pop singer Cliff Richard is the impetus for another Love painting, Doll Boy, in wich Richard is expressionistically rendered with the word “Queen” scrawled across his lower body.

 
https://www.thedavidhockneyfoundation.org/chronology/1960
 

Cliff Richard’s latest hit single was the Lionel Bart song, “Living Doll.” In a series of studies and drawings connected to a new painting, Doll Boy, Hockney made Cli himself the object of adulation rather than the girl implied in the song’s lyrics. Doll Boy is an important picture because it is one of the rst of his paintings in which a gure begins to emerge, clothed in a white dress on which is written the word “QUEEN,” leaving one in no doubt as to the meaning of the title.

David Hockney: The Biography, 1937-1975, Christopher Simon Sykes

 

Doll Boy
1961
Oil on canvas 
121.9 x 99 cm
Hamburger Kunsthalle
https://online-sammlung.hamburger-kunsthalle.de/de/objekt/HK-5215/doll-boy?filter%5Bhighlight%5D%5B0%5D=something%20new%20something%20old%20something%20desired&context=default

 <b>David Hockney</b>
(1963)
 

Hockney formed his first impressions of Los Angeles from books and magazines he read before he visited the city. While still in London he painted an invented shower scene, Domestic Scene, Los Angeles, 1963 (private collection), which included an image of two men taken from the homoerotic American magazine Physique Pictorial. The magazine, to which Hockney frequently referred for images, published photographs of men in various contrived poses, shot in supposed domestic interiors.
 

Though the magazine, published in Los Angeles by Bob Mizer of the Athletic Model Guild, was aimed at homosexual men, it had to be careful not to openly proclaim its market, so the resulting images, usually of virile young men pretending to be engaged in everyday domestic activities such as vacuuming, showering and washing-up, have a coyness that amused Hockney no end. 

David Hockney: The Biography, 1937-1975, Christopher Simon Sykes

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20345305-david-hockney

”The great thing about showers is that you can see the body. The body is more visible in a shower, so it’s more interesting to watch somebody have a shower rather than take a bath, and that was the appeal, and of course the technical thing of painting water has always interested me, the whole subject of transparency.”

 

David Hockney

 

Domestic Scene, Los Angeles
1963
Oil on canvas
152 x 152 cm
Private collection (sold by Christie’s 15 May 2019)
https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-6205164

 <b>David Hockney</b>
(1962)

<i>After a trip to Florence, Rome, and Berlin with his friend Jeff Goodman, Hockney begins teaching at Maidstone School of Art in the autumn. 

“I taught for one year at Maidstone,” Hockney remembers, “then I gave it up because I would rather have been working on my own work. I didn’t mind teaching once I was there, but in the end I began to resent it.”

He sets himself up with a studio in his new home at Powis Terrace in  London’s Notting Hill district, where among the first works he completes is this one:</I>

https://www.thedavidhockneyfoundation.org/chronology/1962

The First Marriage (A Marriage of Styles I)
1962
Oil on canvas
182 x 214 cm
Tate, London

https://www.tate-images.com/t00596-The-First-Marriage-A-Marriage-of-Styles-I.html
https://www.thedavidhockneyfoundation.org/artwork/3587

The First Marriage is a large painting depicting a couple seen in profile. The man stands behind the woman who is seated, although there is no support beneath her. As in several of Hockney’s painting made in the early 1960s, much of the canvas has been left in its natural state so that most of the background is empty. To the left of the couple, a grey pointed gothic arch shape is painted over an abstract area of colours. Hockney has said that he added this ‘for its ecclesiastical connections with marriage’ (quoted in David Hockney: Seven Paintings, [p.3]

 David Hockney
(1961)

The next painting was completed towards the end of Hockney's second year at the Royal College of Art at a time when homosexuality was still illegal in England. The painting derives its imagery from a poem of the same title by the nineteenth-century American writer, Walt Whitman: two lines of the poem have been scribbled on the right-hand side to offer a commentary on the men's activities. The painting also references a newspaper clipping detailing a climbing accident ('Two Boys Cling to Cliff all Night'), which Hockney interpreted as an allusion to his idol, Cliff Richard.

https://artscouncilcollection.org.uk/artwork/we-two-boys-together-clinging

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Two_Boys_Together_Clinging

We Two Boys Together Clinging
1961
Oil on board
120 x 150 cm
Arts Council Collection, London
https://artscouncilcollection.org.uk/artwork/we-two-boys-together-clinging

David Hockney
(1955)
 

In 1953, Hockney enters Bradford School of Art, a small institution where the focus is on traditional drawing and figurative work. Over the next four years, he develops beyond drawing and studying to become a commercial artist, realising that painting is what most deeply engages him.

Self-portrait
1955
Oil on plywood
61 x 45,7 cm
The David Hockney Foundation
https://www.thedavidhockneyfoundation.org/chronology/1953

 

David Hockney
(9 July 1937 – 11 June 2026)
 

David Hockney was a British painter, stage designer and photographer. As an important contributor to the pop art movement of the 1960s, he is considered one of the most influential British artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. He was known for his vivid, stylised realism and championed figurative work, often in a bold style, during a period when abstract art predominated.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hockney

Portrait of my father
1955
Oil on canvas
51 x 460 cm
Fund David Hockney, London
https://www.thedavidhockneyfoundation.org/chronology/1953