“To do landscapes, you’ve got to know the place rather well. You’ve got to love it actually”
—David HockneyDavid Hockney was visiting Yorkshire with increasing frequency in the early 2000s and decided to move into a studio in the seaside town of Bridlington, East Yorkshire, in 2008. The historic coastal town of Bridlington, or "Brid" as Hockney affectionately calls it, sits 75 miles from his birthplace of Bradford, and was the long-term residence of his sister, Margaret and his beloved late-mother, Laura, who passed away in 1999 at the age of ninety-eight. Bridlington subsequently had a familial significance for Hockney and, by 2008, he had already depicted parts of the town and the surrounding countryside in both watercolour and oil paint. However, Hockney was looking to gain a fresh perspective on this familiar subject, and once again turned to new technologies to reinvigorate his art. Having previously harnessed photography, Xerox printing and a host of other innovative printmaking techniques, Hockney embraced the computer as yet another tool to add to his artistic arsenal. Foreshadowing his innovative adoption of the iPad upon its release in 2010, Hockney mastered Photoshop and created several landscapes on his computer, likening this to drawing "directly in a printing machine." Included among the images he produced is Cardigan Road, Brid., which serves as an important precursor to his later iPad works.
Left: David Hockney, Street Scene, Bridlington, 2004, Collection The David Hockney Foundation. Image: Richard Schmidt, Artwork: © David Hockney
Right: David Hockney, Bridlington Rooftops, October, November, December, 2005.
Image: Richard Schmidt, Artwork: © David Hockney“The computer is a useful tool… It in effect allows you to draw directly in a printing machine, one of its many uses”
—David HockneyDepicting a quiet, residential street in a small town with Roman origins, Hockney experiments with the large variety of mark making tools available via Photoshop. He built the composition of Cardigan Road, Brid. with larger, flatter planes of colour, before using thinner strokes to add details such as the chimneys on the red-roofed houses or indications of grass at the side of the pavement in the foreground. By altering the transparency of the tones he worked with, Hockney was also able to create shadow and depth. Using the slight curvature of the road as a vanishing point, Hockney’s mark making slips towards abstraction as the picture plane recedes, but the colours remain characteristically vibrant. While Hockney had taken to painting Bridlington in watercolour and oil en plein air, his computer drawings had to be executed in the studio. Conjured from memory, the peaceful streets of Cardigan Road, Brid. signify both the familiarity and importance of this landscape to the artist.
Provenance
Annely Juda Fine Art, London (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.
36
Cardigan Road, Brid.
2008
Inkjet printed computer drawing in colours, on wove paper, with full margins.
I. 101 x 71.4 cm (39 3/4 x 28 1/8 in.)
S. 113.7 x 81.6 cm (44 3/4 x 32 1/8 in.)
Signed, dated and numbered 16/25 in pencil, published by the artist (with his blindstamp), and contained within the original pale wooden frame specified by the artist.
Estimate
£20,000 - 30,000 ♠
Sold for £52,920
Rebecca Tooby-Desmond
Specialist, Head of Sale, Editions
T +44 207 318 4079
M +44 7502 417366
rtooby-desmond@phillips.com
Robert Kennan
Head of Editions, Europe
T +44 207 318 4075
M +44 7824 994 784
rkennan@phillips.com
Anne Schneider-Wilson
Senior International Specialist, Editions
T +44 207 318 4042
M +44 7760 864 748
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Evening & Day Editions
London Auction 18 - 19 January 2023
168
This lot is no longer available.
300
This lot is no longer available.
