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oil on canvas

Executed in 1963.
PROVENANCE

Kasmin Gallery, London
Harry N. Abrams Family, New York
Michael D. Abrams, New York
Sale: Christie's, New York, Contemporary Art, 1 November 1984, lot 36
Private Collection, London
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in 1998
EXHIBITED

London, Kasmin Gallery, David Hockney: Pictures with People In, 1963
Düsseldorf, Kunsthalle, David Hockney, 1964, p. 32, no. 63.10, illustrated in colour, p. 35, illustrated
London, Whitechapel Art Gallery; Hannover, Kestner Gesellschaft; Rotterdam, Museum Boymans van Beuningen; Belgrade, Nationalgalerie, David Hockney: Paintings, Prints and Drawings 1960-1970, 1970, p. 35, no. 63.10, illustrated
Paris, Palais du Louvre, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, David Hockney: Tableaux et Dessins: Paintings and Drawings, 1974
Minneapolis, Walker Arts Centre; Mexico City, Museo Tamayo;
Toronto, The Art Gallery of Ontario; Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art; Texas, Fort Worth Art Museum; San Francisco, Museum of Modern Art; London, The Hayward Gallery, Hockney Paints the Stage, 1983-84, p. 10, illustrated in colour
Los Angeles, County Museum; New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art; London, Tate Gallery, David Hockney: A Retrospective, 1988 - 1989, p. 129, illustrated in colour
San Francisco, Museum of Modern Art, Pop! From San Francisco Collections, 2004
LITERATURE AND REFERENCES

Nikos Stangos, Ed., David Hockney by David Hockney, New York 1977, p. 82, no. 88, illustrated
Nikos Stangos, Ed., Pictures by David Hockney, New York 1979, p. 29, illustrated
Martin Friedman, Hockney Paints the Stage, New York 1983, p. 10, illustrated
CATALOGUE NOTE

"The double portrait has allowed Hockney a close, almost voyeuristic scrutiny of relationships, a subject that fascinates him more than any other. How do couples work? How do two people assert and adjust themselves? How can one be alone and not alone at the same time. These are questions he returns to again and again, always with greater understanding, but always with some last question unanswered." (Henry Geldzahler in David Hockney, David Hockney by David Hockney, London 1976, p. 22)

David Hockney emerged from the Royal College of Art to much acclaim in the summer of 1962 but it was the following year which would see the true emergence of his mature style. He was seen as the leading figure of a new generation of British artists with a sophisticated Pop sensibility who were influencing their American counterparts. Following his successful inclusion in four important London showcase exhibitions for new art, his first solo show at Kasmin Gallery in December 1963 was very eagerly anticipated. Kasmin had signed Hockney up whilst still a student in 1961 and his was now the hottest gallery in town and the exhibition, David Hockney: Pictures with People In, was a sell-out.

Seated Woman Being Served Tea by Standing Companion was one of ten paintings included in the exhibition which introduced the world to his now renowned domestic settings, shower scenes and theatrical backdrops for the first time. Alongside the present work, Hockney exhibited The Hypnotist, Domestic Scene, Broadchalke, Wilts and Play within a Play (see fig. 03), all paintings which have now become legendary works of British art. He had first begun to investigate the subject of human relationships through a codified figuration during his studies and throughout 1963 he developed this further through a series of double portraits which intimately scrutinized the mutual interaction of two people, and became the bedrock of his entire oeuvre.

Epic in scale, Seated Woman Being Served Tea by Standing Companion is one of the largest pieces executed during this period and one of a rare few which dealt with the relationship between two women. Hockney here borrowed the central image and title from one of Francis Bacon's favourite sources, Eadweard Muybridge's The Human Figure in Motion (see fig. 01) but chose to keep the existing title because, as he stated in 1970: "I liked its dry humour, in that it made no mention of their nudity". Hockney here pokes fun at a consummately English motif, one that enacts one of the most intimate forms of human interaction in British culture, with the tea cup at the centre of the painting providing the link between the two hands.

The subjects' nudity is further exposed by being placed on a 'stage' with a sumptuously coloured curtain as a backdrop as if 'on show' and a vase of flowers placed to the right, like a prop. This clever compositional vehicle allows Hockney to play with the dual notions of theatrical illusion and depth as a metaphor for his musings on relationships. As he has stated "A curtain after all, is exactly like a painting; you can take a painting off a stretcher, hang it up like a curtain... All the philosophical things about flatness in a painting, if you go into it, are about reality, and if you cut out illusion then painting becomes 'real'. The idea of the curtains is the same thing." (David Hockney, Pictures by David Hockney, London 1976, p. 28)

By using theatrical metaphors in his paintings Hockney felt freer to expand and contract space. This would become a constant feature in his later work and even lead to him designing sets for theatrical productions of The Rake's Progress, The Magic Flute and Oedipus Rex amongst others from the late 1970s onwards. It is interesting to note that the origins of this idea were probably born in 1963 when Hockney visited the National Gallery in London and saw amongst the new acquisitions, a sequence of seventeenth-century frescoes by Domenichino (see fig. 02) which had been transferred to canvas. Hockney has described them as follows: "They were paintings made to look like tapestries made from paintings, already a double level of reality. All of them had borders round and tassels hanging at the bottom and perhaps an inch of floor showing, making the illusionistic depth of the picture one inch." (David Hockney, David Hockney by David Hockney, 1976, p. 90). Thus, the use of the curtain in Seated Woman Being Served Tea by Standing Companion was one of the first of many such uses in Hockney's work. It completely changes the context of the space which might otherwise seem infinite.

As such, this is a landmark painting in Hockney's career, which created the matrix for many of his future works. In a setting which mixes the theatrical with the domestic, this painting manages to combine his earlier abstract sensibilities in its use of form and colour with his bold, technically brilliant figurative style for which he became a household name in the 1960s. Effortlessly drawn, the space seems both endless and flat, the figures' body language both heartily warm and awkwardly cold and the luxurious beauty of the curtain both spatially obstructive and visually arresting.

It was this bold mixture of influences and styles which set Hockney apart from his contemporaries in the 1960s. With a virtually unmatched facility for drawing, he was endlessly experimenting with a variety of ideas which put him at the forefront of the creative vibrancy of "Swinging London". As Peter Webb said in his biography of David Hockney, 1963, the year of the creation of Seated Woman Being Served Tea by Standing Companion, "was not only a productive year in terms of his paintings; it was also the year that saw his reputation fully established with both the critics and the wider public... Hockney embodied the mood of the period, and he found himself being consulted on a wide range of topics as a representative voice of his age-group as well as a leading figure in British Art." (Peter Webb, David Hockney, London 1988, p. 59)