"For me, it’s really the joy of looking out into the world and getting this positive energy."
—David HockneyExecuted in 2011, David Hockney’s The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate, East Yorkshire in 2011 (twenty-eleven) - 17 April is part of a groundbreaking series which represents the artist’s first foray into iPad drawing. Much like Claude Monet’s series of Haystacks, Hockney’s first set of iPad drawings represents an attempt to capture the nuanced changes that take place in a single landscape – from day to day, from hour to hour and even from minute to minute. Focusing on the transition from winter to spring in the rural landscape of East Yorkshire,i Hockney has created a phenomenal set of landscape “paintings,” which captures the incredible variety of colors, textures and moods during the changing of the seasons in the English countryside. The present work features splendid hues of lime and forest green to illustrate the vegetation, and a bright magenta to capture either the burgeoning light of dawn or the fading skies after sunset.
Hockney with his iPad at an exhibition of his work in Guggenheim Museum, Spain, 2012, Image: REUTERS / Alamy Stock Photo A New Medium
Always eager to embrace new technology in his art, Hockney thinks of the iPad as an exciting new medium that allows him to capture subjects he could never represent with paint. Speaking of this series, he has said, “The more I got into the iPad, the more I realized what a fantastic medium it is for landscape. There are certain things you can do very, very quickly using it. One is that you can establish a palette for any kind of light extremely rapidly.... Even in the winter you can capture the light.... You need a fast method to do that.”ii Monet would capture the essential mood of a moment, the precise shades of light of an instant in time, by painting sketches en plein air and then returning to the studio to finish the works. In the same way, Hockney uses an iPad app called Brushes to capture the colors, the light, and the feeling of the landscape, and then returns to the studio to complete the composition.iii The process is a joyful one, Hockney has said, as it gives him a new way to capture the world’s beauty.
i “Chronology: 2011,” The David Hockney Foundation, online
ii Ibid.
iii David Hockney, “‘I love drawing’: David Hockney on iPad painting and finding joy in spring,” The Royal Academy, May 18, 2021, onlineProvenance
L.A. Louver, Los Angeles
Acquired from the above by the present ownerExhibited
London, Royal Academy of Arts; Bilbao, Guggenheim Museum; Cologne, Museum Ludwig, David Hockney. A Bigger Picture, January 21, 2012–February 4, 2013, no. 119.26, p. 233 (another example exhibited and illustrated)
Paris, Galerie Lelong, David Hockney: The Arrival of Spring, May 21–July 24, 2015, p. 63 (another example exhibited and illustrated)
Melbourne, National Gallery of Victoria, David Hockney: Current, November 11, 2016–March 13, 2017, pp. 127, 142, 281 (another example exhibited and illustrated, pp. 127, 281)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.
Property from a Sophisticated Collection
147
The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate, East Yorkshire in 2011 (twenty eleven) - 17 April
signed and dated "David Hockney 11." lower right; numbered "9/25" lower left
iPad drawing printed on paper
55 x 41 3/8 in. (139.7 x 105.1 cm)
Executed in 2011, this work is number 9 from an edition of 25.
Estimate
$150,000 - 200,000
Sold for $277,200
Annie Dolan
Specialist, Head of Day Sale, Morning Session
+1 212 940 1288
adolan@phillips.com
20th Century & Contemporary Art Day Sale, Morning Session
New York Auction 19 May 2022
119
This lot is no longer available.
181
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