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Artist or Maker: Hockney, David (b. 1937)

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Provenance: Annely Juda Fine Art, London.
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1997.

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Exhibited: London, Annely Juda Fine Art, David Hockney: Flowers, Faces and Spaces, May-July 1997.

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Literature: C. Sarler, "The Flowerpot Man," in The Sunday Times Magazine, 27 April 1997 (illustrated in colour, p. 28).

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Notes:
Artist's Resale Right ("droit de Suite"). If the Artist's Resale Right Regulations 2006 apply to this lot, the buyer also agrees to pay us an amount equal to the resale royalty provided for in those Regulations, and we undertake to the buyer to pay such amount to the artist's collection agent.
David Hockney has drawn and painted flowers throughout his career, but has never had such a period of such concentration on this still-life theme as in 1996, when he painted 25 finely wrought and vibrant compositions, one after another. Hockney's White Lilies and Orchid, a classic still life of flowers upon a table with a potted plant below is the product of a fertile period of painterly production in which the British-born artist returned to a more traditional conception of space and single point perspective after an extensive exploration of abstraction and Cubist inspired photo-collages. This particularly lush, joyous and vivid floral study gives full range to Hockney's naturally restrained and elegant line. Far from the muted tonal range and meticulously detailed lilies seen in his celebrated painting Mr. and Mrs. Clark and Percy (Tate Gallery 1970-71), White Lilies and Orchid is nevertheless a keenly observed and pictorially sophisticated image that elevates this humble genre to a state of purity and simplicity in much the same way as the work of Hockney's hero, Henri Matisse.

Hockney often uses art to express the love he has felt for others, and consequently, his works contain a personal significance. His flower paintings of 1996 followed a long period in which the artist was burdened by the death of many of his closest friends. Yet, as this luminous still-life attests, his optimism for the world remained undimmed, and he chose to memorialise the fragile beauty that may be found in life rather than dwell on the inevitability of decay. When asked in an interview whether the passing of his friends had darkened his work, Hockney responded recounting his experience of the 1993 Matisse retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York: 'I spent about five hours in there. It was one of the highest and deepest pleasures I've had. But I remember there was a painting of a little still life, just a pot of flowers and a bust on a table, and it's painted in 1942. You look at the date and you think, in Europe they were just ripping themselves apart. It's ghastly ... I'm glad he painted it. I'm very glad somebody sat down and did something like that' (Hockney, quoted in T. Gabriel, 'At Home with David Hockney', in The New York Times, 21 January 1993, reproduced at www.nytimes.com).

The series of paintings of which White Lilies and Orchid is a part was also a direct response to another source of artistic inspiration. While in Holland in the summer of 1996, Hockney viewed a Vermeer exhibition at the Royal Cabinet of Paintings at Mauritshuis in The Hague. Struck by the lasting vibrancy of Vermeer's translucent colours and the way the painter controlled light, he returned to his Los Angeles studio with renewed vigour. Hockney's subsequent flower paintings mark a period in which he was able to concentrate purely on painting, free from the distractions of the many theatrical productions he had designed throughout the eighties and early nineties. Reflecting on Vermeer's work, Hockney mused on the fugitive nature of colour if not used with technical precision, and began emulating the old master painter's technique of layering colour by loosely over-painting vivid grounds to intensify the glow of his flowers. As Hockney explained: 'Seeing how Vermeer handled the paint,' and beyond that how he controlled the light on to his subjects, sent me back to the studio with tremendous energy. In fact, I decided the best place to paint the flower studies was at the far end of the studio, at the top of the stairs, just outside the loo. It might seem a bit peculiar, but that was where the north light came down in just the correct way, at a certain time of day. That's where I worked on many of the flower study paintings' (Hockney, quoted in P. Joyce, Hockney on 'Art', Conversations with Paul Joyce, London 1999, p. 206).

As with all of Hockney's work, White Lilies and Orchid pulls in two directions, between sensuous joie de vivre and an intense perceptual scrutiny that addresses the problems of representing objects in space. Here, Hockney realistically represents the flowers, their vessels, and the surrounding environment, yet his use of bold colours and few shadows act to flatten the pictorial space. The accurately rendered, though simplified forms of the flowers, and the small, drop-leaf table angled into the picture plane are the main devices that the artist uses to imply three-dimensionality. Through this "removal of distance" as Hockney has called it, viewers are allowed to feel closer to the picture, enveloping them within the artist's manufactured environment. Once "inside" Hockney's picture, the rich colours, cerulean blue and deep red among others, emerge as the true subjects of the composition. In this way, the flowers provide a means of exploring colour, form and space, and how varying methods of representation effect what it is the viewer perceives from what they see.

The "hows" of Hockney's representation are inextricably linked to his work in various media, particularly printmaking and photography, and his interest in their individual methods of picture-making and stylization. Moreover, Hockney is a great believer in the pleasures of art, and pleasurable art, the inherent challenges of art theory notwithstanding. In Hockney's view, to share an experience is to affirm one's humanity, and the joy of discovering the unexpected. This generosity spirit shines through in the dazzling sun-struck colours of the larger-than-life White Lilies and Orchid, offering a seductive visual experience that invites its viewers to look at the world anew.