Sold for: $46,250

PROVENANCE
Private Collection, London, Ontario

LITERATURE
Scottish Arts Council, David Hockney prints: 1954-1977, 1979, catalogue #115
Marco Livingstone, David Hockney, 2017, reproduced page 107

In 1970, the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London hosted a retrospective of David Hockney’s work, organized by Mark Glazebrook, one of Hockney’s earliest patrons. The exhibition showcased dozens of Hockney’s pieces and was accompanied by a catalogue attempting to list all his paintings produced in the previous decade, an impressive accomplishment for an artist still in his early twenties. This ambitious and costly project helped solidify Hockney’s reputation as a significant force in the British art world, and Hockney himself considered it a success, noting, “… seeing the whole body of his work, I think, is quite good for any artist. It’s a shock and you see all the faults, but you see the virtues too.”

To alleviate some exhibition costs, Hockney produced this lithograph, Pretty Tulips, in an edition of 200 – all of which sold out during the show. Pretty Tulips is a fine example of Hockney’s enduring fascination with objects of simple beauty, a theme which he is here revisiting after having spent the majority of 1969 producing the grandiose Grimm etchings. The title itself, with its modest descriptor “pretty,” underscores the work’s decorative and unassuming charm.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars

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