Drawn in 1961 while David Hockney was a student at London’s Royal College of Art, Hairy Legs radiates the imaginative and endearing charm that would become a hallmark of his work. This detailed ink drawing presents a peculiar, imaginary creature, at once amusing and enigmatic. With a potato-like body and long, spindly legs, the figure has a childlike quality, almost resembling a stuffed toy or rudimentary robot. The body is adorned with minuscule, irregular ink strokes that evoke rough, spiky hairs, complementing its lavishly hairy legs. Its paw-like feet extend awkwardly at obtuse angles, creating the impression that the creature is mid-stride, running to the left of the picture plane. Hockney's varied use of line forms a patchwork of patterns and textures, enhancing the creature's slightly human, slightly animal, and entirely otherworldly appearance. With musical notes in its head, a heart symbol on its chest, and numbers scrawled below it, the creature seems to belong to a playful world of coded emotions and secret messages. While its rounded form and cartoonish features evoke innocence, there’s an underlying complexity, as if this figure is trying to communicate something deeper – perhaps a reflection of Hockney's emerging self, capturing the youthful, exploratory spirit of his student days at the Royal College.

 

“In 1960, for a young art student trying to think of modern art, the art of his time, obviously wanting to be involved in it, the opposition of the figure as a subject was very strong. I opposed it too; I thought, this is not the way to go. Yet obviously I was dying to do it, to come to terms with the figure.”
—David Hockney In the early 1960s, Abstract Expressionism dominated the art world and most of Hockney’s peers at the Royal College were following suit. American artists such as Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko led the charge with their entirely abstract works that foregrounded gesture, colour, and form. Hockney initially experimented in this trend but quickly realised it wasn't for him. "I deliberately chose to abandon abstract expressionism and return to the figure because it wasn’t me—I’m a figurative painter," Hockney later said. Following this definitive decision – one the artist would never return from – Hockney embraced figuration, setting him apart from the majority of his fellow RCA students. The body of work he created, with which Hairy Legs is closely related, is known as the Love paintings.
 

The Love paintings, or “homosexual propaganda” as Hockney referred them, explore gay love through veiled symbols and coded text. Alike Hairy Legs, these works feature abstracted, imagined figures surrounded by fragmented text, including both lines from Walt Whitman's poetry, and graffiti copied from the walls of the public bathrooms at Earl’s Court tube station. The hair-like spikes in Hairy Legs appear throughout the Love paintings, but the drawing most closely relates to Doll Boy, a painting inspired by Hockney’s infatuation with pop singer Cliff Richard. Against a burnt-red and ochre striped background, Doll Boy depicts a hybrid, toylike figure, much like the one in Hairy Legs, similarly with musical notes dancing around its head. Hockney explained the painting’s impetus: “I used to cut out photographs of Cliff Richard from newspapers and magazines and stick them up around my little cubicle in the Royal College of Art, partly because other people used to stick up girls pin-ups…. He had a song in which the words were, “She’s a real live walking talking living doll,” and he sang it rather sexily. The title of the painting is based on that line. He’s referring to some girl, so I changed it to boy.” The painting subtly explores themes of gay identity and desire in popular culture, carrying clear homoerotic overtones. Alike Doll Boy, Hairy Legs captures Hockney's playful, yet thoughtful, approach to both figuration and self expression during this formative period.
“When you put a word on a painting, it has a similar effect in a way to a figure; it’s a little bit of a human thing.”
—David Hockney Hairy Legs displays the innovative manner by which Hockney used symbols and coded language in his work of this time. He developed numerical codes in his work, often including 4:8 to denote D.H. and 23:23 for Walt Whitman. In Hairy Legs, the number “138” is drawn in large striped letters. The specific meaning is elusive, though it no doubt relates to the “3.18” scrawled in Doll Boy. Almost like a secret language, these symbols and codes, along with the scribbled lines and text, echo graffiti and speak to the hidden, sometimes clandestine nature of love and desire.
 

Hairy Legs was made at a seminal time in Hockney’s life and development as an artist. In the summer of the following year, after graduating from the Royal College, Hockney travelled to the United States for the first time. There, two integral developmental events took place: Hockney dyed his hair blonde, and he began working on A Rake’s Progress, his first major series of etchings. Both Hairy Legs and A Rake's Progress exhibit a meticulous attention to detail and a dynamic use of line, capturing the complexities of character and setting with a similar precision by employing text and graffiti-like marks around the figures. The fluid, expressive quality of the draughtsmanship in the drawing mirrors the dramatic, narrative-driven line work found throughout the etchings, revealing a consistent mastery in conveying both movement and emotion. For the young Hockney, drawing was not just a means to an end but a foundational practice that allowed him to explore and express his innermost thoughts and feelings. It was through drawing that he developed his unique style, characterised by exquisite draughtsmanship, a highly attuned handling of line, and a deeply compelling means for expressing his own identity.