“My subject is the living world, which is always changing and never twice the same. I don’t really do, you know, sunsets. I’ve always been more interested in how the sun strikes the ground.”
—David Hockney
David Hockney’s seminal series, the Arrival of Spring in Woldgate, East Yorkshire, is an epic of nature that documents both the subtlety and the drama of winter’s transformation into spring. The series, which consists of sixty-one iPad drawings, was conceived in anticipation of the artist’s landmark 2012 retrospective, A Bigger Picture, at the Royal Academy in London. In preparation, the artist returned to his late-mother’s Bridlington home in 2006, so that he could experience and record five Yorkshire springs. Commencing on New Year’s Day, 2011, and culminating in early June, the Arrival of Spring sequence chronicles how winter’s icy roads, violet mists and frosted branches gradually blossom into the luscious greens, clear skies and blossoming flora of late spring.
The series builds on a canonical history of artists who have embarked on sustained studies of specific landscapes at different times of day, month and year. For instance, the Arrival of Spring series draws close parallels to Claude Monet’s forensic observation of the shifting light and changing atmosphere of the Giverny landscape. Similarly, Hockney’s seasonal sequence recalls John Constable’s sustained focus on the gently rolling hills of the Dedham Vale. Like both Monet and Constable, Hockney worked en plein air. This plays a central part in the key preoccupation underlying all three groups of works: the transience of light, colour, the seasons and the passing of time. This enduring concern causes the fleeting light and seasonal atmosphere to become as much a part of each composition’s subject as the landscape itself.
“I was looking forward to it. I couldn't wait to get up there. And in a way, I think I had more pleasure looking at the winter, and spring coming, than anything I’ve done.”
—David HockneyThe Arrival of Spring series was one of Hockney’s earliest forays into iPad drawing. The newly-released iPad enabled a new sense of immediacy – he worked quickly and intensely, building up layers with a highly saturated palette and a wide variety of paint effects. Despite the digital nature of the medium, the final, physical artwork remained in the forefront of Hockney’s mind. As he created the series, he simultaneously experimented with printing the drawings directly from the iPad in different variations. Once the scale of the printed images was settled, this directly influenced the mark-making and composition of Hockney’s iPad draughtsmanship. The final prints were produced on large-scale paper and arranged as a grand narrative cycle at the 2012 Royal Academy exhibition. Ever the innovator, Hockney used this pioneering technique to reinvent and revitalise one of art history’s most traditional of subjects.
Provenance
Annely Juda Fine Art, London Acquired directly from the above by the present owner
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.
The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate, East Yorkshire in 2011 (twenty eleven) - 2 January
2011 iPad drawing in colours, printed on wove paper, with full margins. I. 127 x 95.2 cm (50 x 37 1/2 in.) S. 140.1 x 105.7 cm (55 1/8 x 41 5/8 in.) Signed, dated and numbered 18/25 in pencil, published by the artist, framed.