'Technology always has contributed to art. The brush itself is a piece of technology isn’t it?' —David HockneyFrom its topographical origins to richly allegorical vistas, landscape painting is often considered one of the most traditional artistic genres. In the wake of the Italian Renaissance, European Academies (led by the art-theoretician Andre Felibien) relegated Landscape painting to being the fourth of five controversial hierarchies of genres, based on the supposed inherent moral force of each subject. Landscape painting was considered less valuable than compositions including figures which could be used as vehicles for the artist to communicate a moral or historic narrative. This draconian hierarchy of the 18th Century Parisian Salons naturally prompted rebellion. Under the wheels of change brought by the Industrial Revolution, British artists John Constable and William Turner alongside those from the Barbizan and Impressionist groups in France chose to celebrate scenery for its own sake instead of merely as a background for human narrative.
Informed by this affirmation of landscape painting, David Hockney has continually cast his eye to his surroundings, depicting the landscapes of California, Yorkshire and Normandy with an enduring concern to depict light, colour, the changing of seasons and the passing of time. Ever the innovator, as technologies have developed so have Hockney’s artist methods for capturing and recording the world around him. Nature, the age-old bucolic subject, is treated and transformed by Hockney with his modern and adaptable eye. From the jagged new world view he created in the photography collage of Pearblossom Hwy., 11 - 18th April 1986, #2 (1986), to the distorted saturation of Garrowby Hills (1998), and the immediacy of his iPad drawings in The Arrival of Spring, Woldgate series, Hockney’s approach to such a traditional subject matter has constantly evolved. His interest in the art historical past has always been a practical one: he wants to know how things were made and find inventive, contemporary equivalents.
Left: David Hockney, Pearblossom Hwy., 11 - 18th April 1986, #2, 1986. Image: J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Artwork: © David Hockney.
Right: David Hockney, Garrowby Hill, 1998. Image: Prudence Cuming Associates, Artwork: © David Hockney.'What is really good about it is its speed. No other medium using colour is as fast, meaning you can capture quick lighting effects like nothing else. The spring is just spectacular this year and I am getting it down…'
—David HockneyThe immediacy of the iPad, using the Brushes app, enabled Hockney to capture en-plein air the fleeting light effects and the intimate changes to his surroundings as spring arrived in Woldgate, East Yorkshire. Through the subtle shifts in the landscapes depicted in over 50 digital drawings - executed between early January and early June 2011 - Hockney reveals the gradual seasonal transition.Through The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate, East Yorkshire in 2011 (twenty eleven) - 19 February and The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate, East Yorkshire in 2011 (twenty eleven) - 30 May, Hockney provides us with a glimpse of two different Yorkshire scenes as spring arrives and subsequently has arrived. In February, we see the cold blue hues of a wintery sky, the bold, bare branches of trees with their lost leaves beneath, and a path receding into an icy glow. In May, the landscape has transformed. The path is now rendered in a deep purple, bathing in the sun’s golden glow. It is now spring, and the landscape has fully evolved, optimistically recreating the joyous sensations of new life.
Hockney’s iPad drawings are amongst the most visually seductive and intimate of all the pictures he has created of his birthplace, Yorkshire. Landscape is deeply personal to Hockney and his subsequent series The Arrival of Spring, Normandy (2020), reflects this. Responding to the same season in his new home, following a move to Northern France in 2019, his landscapes embody his prolonged visual engagement with the world around him.
Hockney Drawing on his iPad, 2011
Provenance
LA Louver, California (label verso of frame)
Artist Biography
David Hockney
David Hockney (b. 1937) is one of the most well-known and celebrated artists of the
20th and 21st centuries. He works across many mediums, including painting, collage,
and more recently digitally, by creating print series on iPads. His works show semi-
abstract representations of domestic life, human relationships, floral, fauna, and the
changing of seasons.
Hockney has exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Royal
Academy of Arts in London, and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, among many
other institutions. On the secondary market, his work has sold for more than $90
million.
27
The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate, East Yorkshire in 2011 (twenty eleven) - 19 February
2011
iPad drawing in colours, printed on wove paper, with full margins.
I. 127 x 95.3 cm (50 x 37 1/2 in.)
S. 140 x 105.4 cm (55 1/8 x 41 1/2 in)
Signed, dated and numbered 11/25 in pencil, published by the artist, framed.
Estimate
£100,000 - 150,000 ‡♠
Sold for £315,000
Robert Kennan
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Anne Schneider-Wilson
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David Hockney
London Auction 13 September 2022
