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拍品专文
Bathed in golden light and vibrant colour, Dog Painting 17 is a beautifully executed portrait of David Hockney’s beloved dachshund Stanley. Painted from life in a single sitting, the artist’s swift brushstrokes masterfully capture his companion’s smooth, rounded form, nestled in peaceful repose in the hollow of a cushion. The work belongs to Hockney’s series of Dog Paintings, created between 1994 and 1995: an extraordinary suite of canvases depicting Stanley and his companion Boodgie. With the majority held in the David Hockney Foundation, the present work is one of only a handful in private hands, having being acquired by the current owner in 1996. The Dog Paintings remain some of Hockney’s most intimate, personal and tender works: painted during a period of loss and grief, they are fundamentally portraits of life and love. ‘I did really love them,’ said Hockney. ‘… I loved painting them … they were my best pals’ (Wallace Collection media, online).
Hockney’s Dog Paintings occupy an important place in his work. The artist recalled the unveiling of the series in Los Angeles: ‘We had over 7,000 people in four days,’ he explained. People were so happy. They were even coming to see the pictures with their own dogs’ (quoted in J. Stock, ‘A Dog’s Life’, The Independent, June 1995, online). More recently, the Wallace Collection crowned its 2023 exhibition Faithful Friends: Portraits of Dogs with a final room dedicated entirely to Hockney’s Dog Paintings. More than any other portraits in his work, these paintings radiate character, energy and a sense of devotional harmony. In the present painting, luminous tones of blue and green border the composition, while daubs of brilliant yellow reflect the sunlight to the left. Stanley sleeps just to the right in a patch of delicately drawn shade. Though captured in a state of repose, his entire body quivers with movement. His right ear is caught mid-air by a few, brisk strokes of paint, perking up to listen to a slight disturbance—perhaps the sound of Hockney picking up a new paintbrush.
Stanley entered David Hockney’s life in 1987, shortly followed by Boodgie in 1989. He was named after the English comedian Stan Laurel, who formed half of the iconic comedic duo Laurel and Hardy. Stanley certainly had an attitude, Hockney recalled, constantly following him around in comparison to the more reserved Boodgie. He also had the peculiar habit of sitting up on his hind legs, which Hockney affectionately captured in Dog Painting 41 (1995, David Hockney Foundation). The artist and his dachshunds were inseparable; he observed them daily, and they him. In addition to the Dog Paintings, Hockney depicted them in the major work Montcalm Interior with Two Dogs (1988), as well as a number of other paintings and drawings during this period. ‘These two dear little creatures are my friends,’ he noted. ‘They are intelligent, loving, comical, and often bored. They watch me work; I notice the warm shapes they make together, their sadness and their delights. And, being Hollywood dogs, they somehow seem to know that a picture is being made’ (quoted in David Hockney’s Dog Days, London, 1998, p. 6).
The dogs offered Hockney a great deal of solace during a difficult time in his life, marked by the death of several close friends in 1994. Most notable among these was the celebrated critic and curator Henry Geldzahler, who had been a great comrade of Hockney’s. The artist Sandra Fisher, wife of R. B. Kitaj, also died that year, along with two other dear friends. Hockney remembered how ‘in January I desperately wanted to paint something loving … I felt such a loss of love I wanted to deal with it in some way. I realised I was painting my best friends, Stanley and Boodgie. They sleep with me: I’m always with them here. They don’t go anywhere without me and only occasionally do I leave them. They’re like little people to me. The subject wasn’t dogs but my love of the little creatures’ (quoted in B. Isenberg, ‘Q&A with David Hockney: A Painter Gets Back to Business of Painting’, Los Angeles Times, April 1995, online).
After a decade of experimentation with photography, digital media and set design, the Dog Paintings formed part of Hockney’s triumphant return to painting. More specifically, they marked his renewed engagement with figurative subjects: ‘I was painting a lot of big [abstract] pictures at the same time, internal worlds,’ he explained. ‘These are the external world because it was the one immediately in front of me. I rather enjoyed that contrast’ (quoted in J. Stock, op. cit.). Painting his dachshunds proved a new technical challenge. In order to accommodate his unpredictable, canine sitters, Hockney would arrange sheets of paper all over the house and studio to catch the dogs in moments of repose. He had fresh paints and canvases ready in order to cause minimal disturbance, and constructed elevated platforms to place their cushions and study them at eye-level. Hockney affectionately remembered how even if they had settled, ‘they would always have the eye checking if I got up. So I had to stay still’ (Wallace Collection, op. cit.).
Dogs have long occupied a prominent position in art history: not only as subjects, but also as faithful studio companions. Pierre Bonnard, Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol were all proud dachshund owners. Lucian Freud, meanwhile, depicted his beloved whippets Pluto and Eli in paintings, drawings and etchings. For Hockney, the tiny creatures offered not only a source of comfort but also a wellspring of artistic inspiration, fuelling his love of painting from life. As he continued to deal with personal loss throughout the 1990s, the artist would channel his emotions into a similarly radiant series of sunflower paintings. Following the death of his mother in 1999, he began to return gradually to his roots in Yorkshire, taking his native landscape as his subject in what would become one of his most extensive series of paintings. The immediacy and spontaneity of the Dog Paintings would nourish these bodies of work. With its dappled golden light and brushwork alive with motion, the present example heralds the birth of this vital new chapter in Hockney’s art.
Hockney’s Dog Paintings occupy an important place in his work. The artist recalled the unveiling of the series in Los Angeles: ‘We had over 7,000 people in four days,’ he explained. People were so happy. They were even coming to see the pictures with their own dogs’ (quoted in J. Stock, ‘A Dog’s Life’, The Independent, June 1995, online). More recently, the Wallace Collection crowned its 2023 exhibition Faithful Friends: Portraits of Dogs with a final room dedicated entirely to Hockney’s Dog Paintings. More than any other portraits in his work, these paintings radiate character, energy and a sense of devotional harmony. In the present painting, luminous tones of blue and green border the composition, while daubs of brilliant yellow reflect the sunlight to the left. Stanley sleeps just to the right in a patch of delicately drawn shade. Though captured in a state of repose, his entire body quivers with movement. His right ear is caught mid-air by a few, brisk strokes of paint, perking up to listen to a slight disturbance—perhaps the sound of Hockney picking up a new paintbrush.
Stanley entered David Hockney’s life in 1987, shortly followed by Boodgie in 1989. He was named after the English comedian Stan Laurel, who formed half of the iconic comedic duo Laurel and Hardy. Stanley certainly had an attitude, Hockney recalled, constantly following him around in comparison to the more reserved Boodgie. He also had the peculiar habit of sitting up on his hind legs, which Hockney affectionately captured in Dog Painting 41 (1995, David Hockney Foundation). The artist and his dachshunds were inseparable; he observed them daily, and they him. In addition to the Dog Paintings, Hockney depicted them in the major work Montcalm Interior with Two Dogs (1988), as well as a number of other paintings and drawings during this period. ‘These two dear little creatures are my friends,’ he noted. ‘They are intelligent, loving, comical, and often bored. They watch me work; I notice the warm shapes they make together, their sadness and their delights. And, being Hollywood dogs, they somehow seem to know that a picture is being made’ (quoted in David Hockney’s Dog Days, London, 1998, p. 6).
The dogs offered Hockney a great deal of solace during a difficult time in his life, marked by the death of several close friends in 1994. Most notable among these was the celebrated critic and curator Henry Geldzahler, who had been a great comrade of Hockney’s. The artist Sandra Fisher, wife of R. B. Kitaj, also died that year, along with two other dear friends. Hockney remembered how ‘in January I desperately wanted to paint something loving … I felt such a loss of love I wanted to deal with it in some way. I realised I was painting my best friends, Stanley and Boodgie. They sleep with me: I’m always with them here. They don’t go anywhere without me and only occasionally do I leave them. They’re like little people to me. The subject wasn’t dogs but my love of the little creatures’ (quoted in B. Isenberg, ‘Q&A with David Hockney: A Painter Gets Back to Business of Painting’, Los Angeles Times, April 1995, online).
After a decade of experimentation with photography, digital media and set design, the Dog Paintings formed part of Hockney’s triumphant return to painting. More specifically, they marked his renewed engagement with figurative subjects: ‘I was painting a lot of big [abstract] pictures at the same time, internal worlds,’ he explained. ‘These are the external world because it was the one immediately in front of me. I rather enjoyed that contrast’ (quoted in J. Stock, op. cit.). Painting his dachshunds proved a new technical challenge. In order to accommodate his unpredictable, canine sitters, Hockney would arrange sheets of paper all over the house and studio to catch the dogs in moments of repose. He had fresh paints and canvases ready in order to cause minimal disturbance, and constructed elevated platforms to place their cushions and study them at eye-level. Hockney affectionately remembered how even if they had settled, ‘they would always have the eye checking if I got up. So I had to stay still’ (Wallace Collection, op. cit.).
Dogs have long occupied a prominent position in art history: not only as subjects, but also as faithful studio companions. Pierre Bonnard, Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol were all proud dachshund owners. Lucian Freud, meanwhile, depicted his beloved whippets Pluto and Eli in paintings, drawings and etchings. For Hockney, the tiny creatures offered not only a source of comfort but also a wellspring of artistic inspiration, fuelling his love of painting from life. As he continued to deal with personal loss throughout the 1990s, the artist would channel his emotions into a similarly radiant series of sunflower paintings. Following the death of his mother in 1999, he began to return gradually to his roots in Yorkshire, taking his native landscape as his subject in what would become one of his most extensive series of paintings. The immediacy and spontaneity of the Dog Paintings would nourish these bodies of work. With its dappled golden light and brushwork alive with motion, the present example heralds the birth of this vital new chapter in Hockney’s art.