David Hockney’s Autour de la maison, été (2019) presents a sweeping panoramic vision of the artist’s home in Normandy and ranks among the most ambitious works of his recent practice. Measuring an astonishing twelve metres in length, it is one of the largest artworks ever made by the artist and is his largest editioned print alongside Autour de la maison, hiver, the winter version of the same subject. The composition unfolds across a single continuous sheet, recalling the narrative structure of the historic Bayeux Tapestry, which chronicled the dramatic events of the Norman Conquest in 1066. In Hockney’s interpretation, however, epic historical narrative gives way to a contemplative journey through the artist’s garden in the height of summer. From planted shrubs and elderflower patches to medieval barns and a distant treehouse, this bucolic landscape bears the imprint of Hockney’s daily life in Normandy, reflecting the profound relationship between the artist and the natural world that has come to define his late practice.
The work’s extraordinary horizontal sweep encourages a slow and immersive encounter. Rendered on a near-cinematic scale, the composition invites the viewer to traverse the artist’s garden step by step, absorbing the intimate details and shifting viewpoints embedded within this expansive pictorial frieze of summer. Parallels may be drawn with the Bayeux Tapestry itself, which Hockney has cited as an inspiration for his monumental later project A Year in Normandie (2020–2021), a 295-foot (90-metre) iPad painting printed on paper. Composed of an array of individual images arranged in a continuous sequence, that work extends the panoramic narrative approach already present in Autour de la maison, été.
“I drew on the iPad when it first came out, in 2010… In 2018, Jonathan Wilkinson, my technical assistant, said he could make a new app with a mathematician in Leeds. It was rather good, and then I got six or seven new brushes custom made. I did say I was drawing on the iPad, but actually, I’m painting on it.” – David Hockney
Hockney’s use of digital technology in the present work forms part of his decades-long engagement with the possibilities of printmaking and image-making. Throughout his career he has continually expanded the parameters of printmaking, moving between etching, lithography, photography and digital tools. His experimental ‘Home Made Prints’ of the 1980s, produced using a standard office Xerox machine, anticipated the technological curiosity that now defines his celebrated iPad and computer editions. Developed in collaboration with his technical assistant Jonathan Wilkinson, these digital compositions allowed Hockney to translate the immediacy of drawing and painting into the language of contemporary printmaking; Wilkinson himself appears as the subject of lot 9 in the present sale.
Monumental in scale yet intimate in subject, Autour de la maison, été encapsulates Hockney’s singular ability to unite technological innovation with a deeply personal vision of landscape. A celebration of place, observation and artistic experimentation, this work occupies an important position within the artist’s Normandy series and is the tour de force of his wider exploration of digital image-making. Rarely does an editioned print achieve such breadth of scale and ambition, making the present work a striking and highly desirable example of Hockney’s celebrated recent practice.