United Kingdom: A painting by David Hockney sold for 27 million francs

David Hockney’s painting “Dawn, Saint-Maxime,” depicting a sunrise on the Cote d’Azur, sold at auction in London on Wednesday for 24 million pounds (about 27 million francs), more than double its original estimate. The canvas is a work produced by the British painter early in his career, between his famous paintings of Californian swimming pools and the “nature” of his later works.

But according to Christie’s description of the house, which is in charge of the sale, “crystal water bathed in the bright light of a high day,” it illustrates the painter’s growing fascination with light. At the time she painted this painting, Hockney, now 85, was living through the zenith of her relationship with Peter Schlesinger and was therefore in a period of “personal happiness and professional success,” according to the sale house.

The painting was exhibited during the first retrospective dedicated to Hockney in London in 1970 and has not been shown to the public for more than three decades. It is part of a group of four paintings taken from photographs taken by Hockney while traveling through Europe with Schlesinger in 1968. “In the moving painting ‘On the Terrace’ in 1971 Hockney expresses his final farewell to his lover with a poignant sunset”, still notes Christie’s.

“Representing water, describing water is a methodological problem because it can be anything, any color, and it moves,” Hockney explained a few years ago. In 2018, his painting “Portrait of an Artist (Pond with Two Figures)” sold for more than $90 million in New York, a record for a living artist.