David Hockney
(2011-2020) 

In 2020 a limited edition was published of an  artist’s book by David Hockney.

In this artist’s book of 120 iPhone and iPad drawings, David Hockney follows the course of the seasons through the window of his Yorkshire home. Each image depicts a fleeting moment—from the colorful sunrise and lilac morning sky to nighttime impressions, snow-covered branches and the arrival of spring. Printed in large format, this is a highly perceptive and poetic body of work.
“In this beautiful art edition, each image captures a fleeting moment, from the colourful sunrise and lilac morning sky to night-time impressions and the arrival of spring. Fascinating details reveal drops on window panes, distant lights in the night, reflections on glasses, bottles, and vases an abundance of subtly varied vegetation.”

https://www.taschen.com/en/limited-editions/art/66902/david-hockney-my-window-art-edition-no-751-1-000-no-778-17th-april-2011/

My Window, Art Edition 'No. 778', 
2011
IPad Drawing printed in colours on archival paper
56 × 42.3 cm
Private collection
https://www.taschen.com/en/limited-editions/art/66902/david-hockney-my-window-art-edition-no-751-1-000-no-778-17th-april-2011/

 David Hockney
(2013) 

In late January of 2013 Hockey decides to chronicle The Arrival of Spring in 2013. In May he finishes the 25-part work, remarkable for the use of charcoal alone to capture the changing seasons.

The Arrival of Spring in 2013
Charcoal on 25 sheets of paper (56 x 77 cm each)
The David Hockney Foundation
https://www.thedavidhockneyfoundation.org/chronology/2013

 

 David Hockney
(2013) 

Hockney begins working with charcoal on paper and completes several self portraits. They have a more serious look than the almost playful iPad self portraits done previously. He also does several large drawings of a tree trunk he calls “Totem,’ featured in several earlier paintings.

”I drove out on Woldgate and noticed the Totem had been deliberately sawn through. A bit before this I was sent photographs of graffiti that had been painted upon it. Annoying, but I thought the winter would take them away. I was at first very sad and went to bed for two days a bit depressed by the vandalism. Then I decided to draw it.”

Vandalized Totem, 22 November, 2012
Charcoal on paper
56 x 77 cm
The David Hockney Foundation
https://www.thedavidhockneyfoundation.org/chronology/2012

 David Hockney
(2021) 

Tulips in Cut Glass shows Hockney zeroing in on the drama of colour and transparency. The vivid purple and pink tulips rise from a sharply rendered cut glass vase, where reflections and refractions are built from quick digital strokes. The red checked tablecloth anchors the composition and gives a sense of domestic familiarity, while the dark background isolates the bouquet, forcing the viewer’s attention onto the saturated forms and lively drawing. Every mark feels responsive to the real object in front of him, not a carefully staged still life.
 
The work highlights how Hockney uses the iPad to bring energy back into one of art’s oldest subjects. He captures flowers as they are in the moment, petals shifting, stems leaning, colour changing with the light. The cut glass vase becomes a technical challenge he meets with immediacy, adjusting line and tone on the spot. Printed at scale, the digital drawing gains the physical presence of a traditional artwork while keeping its freshness intact. It is a contemporary still life rooted in speed, observation and the thrill of looking.


https://geistmc.com/our-artists/david-hockney/20-flowers-and-some-bigger-pictures/16th-march-2021-tulips-in-cut-glass-2021/

16th March, 2021, Tulips in cut glass, 2021
2021
iPad Painting Printed on Paper (edition of 50)
89 x 53.5 cm
https://geistmc.com/our-artists/david-hockney/20-flowers-and-some-bigger-pictures/16th-march-2021-tulips-in-cut-glass-2021/

 David Hockney
(2010)

In 2010 Hockney buys one of the first iPads upon its release by Apple in April, excited by its larger screen relative to the iPhone”s. Once the Brushes app is mastered, he uses it to draw the landscape from the motif, en plain air, including Yosemite National Park.
 

Created entirely on iPad, the Yosemite Suite marked an important development in Hockney’s digital practice, demonstrating how new technology could expand the possibilities of landscape drawing and printmaking. Produced during the artist’s engagement with Yosemite National Park, the series captures the shifting light, texture, and spatial complexity of the Californian landscape with immediacy and precision. The Yosemite works are now regarded among the most significant digital landscapes within Hockney’s wider body of printed editions.

Yosemite iPad Landscape
Yosemite Number 2, 2010
iPad drawing printed on paper
94 x 71cm
Edition of 25
Private collection
https://geistmc.com/our-artists/david-hockney/yosemite-suite/yosemite-no-2/

 David Hockney
(2009) 

Hockney had been using an iPhone since 2007, mostly for texting, but his sister Margaret told him about a new app called Brushes. Hockney is entranced and soon masters it. Friends around the world begin receiving new works of art from Hockney’s iPhone.

Between 2009 and 2010, David Hockney revolutionized digital art practice by embracing the iPhone as a legitimate artistic medium, creating an extraordinary body of work that would fundamentally challenge traditional notions of artmaking. Works such as Glass, My Bedroom Window, Flame, Lilies, Early Morning, and White Rose demonstrate Hockney's remarkable ability to transform everyday technology into vehicles for sophisticated artistic expression. Executed using the Brushes app, these drawings represent more than mere technological experimentation—they constitute a serious investigation into light, color, and perception through an entirely new lens. The immediacy of the iPhone allowed Hockney to capture fleeting moments with unprecedented spontaneity, often creating works directly upon waking or in response to his immediate surroundings.
https://guyhepner.com/david-hockney/iphone-drawings


This iPhone drawing shows a vase of bright peonies in the foreground placed on a windowsill, with the pace of Hockney's brushstrokes appearing to match the vibrant flowers. The My Window series documents the process of the changing seasons as Spring arrives and as we can see, these flowers bloom.

Peonies No 535 iPhone Drawing from My Window
iPhone drawing printed as an eight colour inkjet print on cotton fibre archival paper.
56 x 43.4 cm.
2009.
Edition of 250.
Drawn on 28 June 2009 as part of the My Window series.
With accompanying My Window Art Edition book and portfolio.
https://www.cliftongallery.com/product-page/david-hockney-peonies-untitled-535

David Hockney
(2011) 
 

In 2011, David Hockney unveiled a monumental series of digital paintings that captured the fleeting beauty of a Yorkshire spring. Titled The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate, East Yorkshire in 2011, this collection represents a pivotal moment in contemporary art, blending traditional landscape sensibilities with cutting-edge technology. 
The Arrival of Spring comprises 52 parts, including 51 iPad drawings in which Hockney captured the changing nature along different sections of the road, and his largest painting: "The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate, East Yorkshire in 2011 (twenty-eleven)," a nearly ten-meter-long painting composed of 32 canvases (each 91.4 x 121.9 cm). It depicts a forest in vibrant colors. The leaves appear to be flying, and a path leads into the burgeoning greenery at the center. The painting technique is understated, adapted to the possibilities of the iPad drawings. David Hockney suggests depth through the blue-green, blurred forests in the background, while in the foreground, the vegetation on the ground is rendered in a patterned and seemingly more detailed manner. Everything is highly stylized and is reminiscent of the decorative tradition of early 20th-century French painting – Post-Impressionism, Fauvism, Henri Rousseau, Pierre Bonnard and Henri Matisse would be examples (→ Matisse – Bonnard).

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13256057-david-hockney

The arrival of Spring Woldgate Woods
2011
Oil on 32 canvases 
91 x 122 cm (each) 365 x 975 cm overall
Centre Pompidou, Paris
https://www.centrepompidou.fr/en/ressources/media/BWaINat

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13256057-david-hockney 

 

 David Hockney
(2008) 
 

 Three Trees Near Thixendale, Spring 2008 is one of four pieces that David Hockney painted from the same spot during the winter and summer of 2007, and the spring and autumn of 2008. No matter which picture you observe you cannot fail to be impressed with his vivid colours. Spring's here again, the winter has surrendered to the new beginnings found in a springtime lansdacpe, but spring passes into summer and you are all too acutely aware of it here. The emerging wildflowers and foliage coming into leaf recall the ghosts of the seasons past and remind us that with their emerging they too will die in the cycle of the seasons. All things must pass.
Paul Page, 2012

Three Trees Near Thixendale, Spring
2008
Oil on 8 canvases 
91.5 x 122 each  (183 x 244 overall)
Private collection
https://www.thedavidhockneyfoundation.org/artwork/2472

David Hockney
(2010) 

 

David Hockney’s Woldgate Woods, Winter, 2010 is a dazzling continuation of the artist’s career-consuming project to better see the world around him. Filmed as part of a yearlong immersion in the landscape of the Yorkshire Wolds, this exquisite, sunbathed snowscape takes the viewer on a cinematic pilgrimage of sight. Against a clear blue sky a thick blanket of snow carpets the ground and encrusts the canopied branches of the trees. In places sun floods the frame, hanging low and out of sight, and casting long, dramatic shadows across the woodland floor as tones of cool, pale blue give way to shimmering bright whites. Part of a seasonal quartet documenting the effects of light and time on place, the film combines archetypal themes of Hockney’s practice with his insatiable pursuit of new technologies. 
Woldgate Woods, Winter, 2010 has been exhibited in numerous surveys of the artist’s work, including the major travelling retrospective David Hockney: A Bigger Picture, which opened at the Royal Academy, London in 2012.

Woldgate Woods, Winter, 
2010
Nine synchronised digital videos
overall: 206 x 362cm.
Executed in 2010, this work is number seven from an edition of ten plus two artist's proofs
Private collection (sold at Christie’s 5Mar 2025)
https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-6523681
https://www.thedavidhockneyfoundation.org/chronology/2010
https://youtu.be/SMjvI5aa9TE?si=aHQj-V4ws_LG9k_i

 <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

 David Hockney
(1985) 

A last one of the "Joiners" before we turn to the landscape paintings of the 1990's

The location chosen for the next artwork has been described as one of the most romantic settings in Paris. Apart from providing visual elements for tourists, Place Furstenberg also carries architectural significance, given its historical background in housing an abbey. Created over three days – August 7th through 9th – this artwork showcases Hockney’s experimentation with multiple photography techniques while creating masterful art pieces that retain their relevance even up till today.
In essence, Place Furstenberg joins both history and contemporary art through Hockney’s eye for detail while retaining its beauty almost four decades after it was created.

Place Furstenberg, Paris, August 1985
1985
Collage of chromogenic prints (Edition of 2)
110.5 × 155.9 cm
Collection of the artist

 David Hockney
(1983) 
 

In the next collage, Hockney captures a conversation between the novelist Christopher Isherwood and his friend Bob Holman, resulting in an intimate, layered portrayal that blends personal connection with a sense of movement and time.
The choice of subject-Christopher Isherwood, a prominent writer, and Bob Holman-adds a layer of significance to the piece. Both individuals were part of Hockney's social circle in Los Angeles, a city whose artistic and cultural vibrancy Hockney celebrated. By choosing to portray Isherwood, Hockney acknowledges the influence of literary and intellectual figures on his own life and work, honoring these connections while pushing the boundaries of photographic representation.

Christopher Isherwood talking to Bob Holman
1983
Photographic Joiner (edition of 20)
88.9 x 139.7 cm
Private collection (Edition #9 Sold by Heritage Auctions on Dec 10 2024)
https://fineart.ha.com/itm/photographs/david-hockney-b-1937-christopher-isherwood-talking-to-bob-holman-santa-monica-1983dyecoupler-photograph-collage/a/8182-77070.s

 David Hockney

(1983) 

As one of Hockney’s photo collages, or “joiners,” Walking in the Zen Garden at the Ryoanji Temple, the present lot, utilizes the layering of each Polaroid images to tease the two-dimensionality of photography. Stones in the garden sit in the distance while Hockney’s feet stagger along the bottom border. Here, Hockney creates a sense of space while encouraging the viewer to participate in it.

https://onlineonly.christies.com/s/horizon-post-war-contemporary-art/david-hockney-b-1937-29/60044

Walking in the Zen Garden at the Ryoanji Temple
1983
Photographic Joiner (edition of 20)
101.6 x 158.8
Private collection (#7 sold by Christie’s 23 aug 2018)
https://onlineonly.christies.com/s/horizon-post-war-contemporary-art/david-hockney-b-1937-29/60044

 David Hockney
(1982) 
 

Next a photo collage of Hockneys mother at Bolton Abbey. Hockney made this photo collage titled My Mother, Bolton Abbey, Yorkshire,  in November 1982. The style of this montage was termed Photo Joiners by Hockney. 

https://www.artchive.com/artwork/my-mother-bolton-abbet-david-hockney/

Mother, Bolton Abbey
1982
Photographic print
Edition of 20
119 x 69 cm
Among others: The National Media Museum, Bradford
Private collections

https://www.myartbroker.com/artist-david-hockney/collection-photo-collages/artwork-my-mother-bolton-abbey-yorkshire-november-signed-print?lang=en&slug=david-hockney&collectionTaxonomy=collection&collection=photo-collages&artworkSlug=my-mother-bolton-abbey-yorkshire-november-signed-print