Few artists would turn down the honour of painting a reigning monarch but David Hockney did just that, declining several requests to capture the late Queen’s likeness because, he said, he only painted people he knew well.
In Hockney’s view, fellow artist Lucian Freud should also have steered clear of the royal commission, the small oil he produced of the Queen in 2001 being no more than ‘OK’.
‘When you look at the Queen, her skin is absolutely marvellous,’ he said. ‘It’s very beautiful skin. Well, he didn’t get that at all.’
As this suggests, Hockney was never afraid to speak his mind, particularly when it came to what he perceived as the overbearing nanny state, exemplified in his opinion by the ban on smoking in public places introduced by Tony Blair ’s Labour government in 2007.
He loathed ‘the f****** Blairs’ and Gordon Brown, ‘a dreary aesthetic Calvinistic prig. If he came to my house, I’d kick him in the f****** balls’.
Rarely seen without a cigarette between his lips, Hockney pointed out that artists like Picasso, Matisse and Turner were all life-long smokers and claimed that inhaling was part of his creative process. Not while actually painting, because he needed his hands free, but in the moments in between.
The late David Hockney was rarely seen without a cigarette, and often pointed out that great artists like Picasso, Matisse and Turner were all life-long smokers too
Hockney turned down several opportunities to paint Queen Elizabeth II, because he said he only painted people he knew well. (Pictured receiving his OBE at Buckingham Palace in 2012)
Hockney, who has died at the age of 88, became our best-known and best-loved living artist with an impressive career that spanned seven decades
‘When I stop and look at what I’ve done, the first thing I do is light up,’ he said.
Puffing defiantly away until the end of his life, Hockney, who has died at the age of 88, became our best-known and best-loved living artist with a career which spanned seven decades.
Painting, drawing, photography, printmaking, stage design, and, later, iPad and digital works… he conquered them all with subjects ranging from the sun-drenched Californian scenes which first made him famous to his more recent depictions of his native Yorkshire in vast, immersive canvases.
In constantly reinventing himself as an artist, he showed the daring also typical of his colourful personal life, a quality he inherited from his much adored parents.
While his mother Laura, a devout Methodist, was a vegetarian in an era when it was almost unheard of, his father Kenneth’s mantra was ‘Never worry what the neighbours think’, one which Hockney observed throughout his long career.
The fourth of five children, he was born in 1937, two years before the Second World War when paper rationing forced the budding artist to draw in any blank space he could find, including the backs of hymnbooks during chapel services.
He would also wake up early and creep downstairs to draw in the white spaces around the edge of the daily newspaper, much to the gentle irritation of his somewhat eccentric father, an accounts clerk and occasional inventor.
Long before high-visibility jackets became commonplace, Kenneth made armbands out of fluorescent orange material so that he could be seen at night when crossing the road.
Among his quirks was a determination never to throw anything away. Hockney’s older brother Paul remembered how, after his death in 1978, the family found 20 pairs of false teeth in his bedroom cabinet, all neatly labelled – “good for eating lettuce”, “good for eating meat”, “good for smiling”.
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While at the Royal College of Art in 1959, Hockney's peers mocked his Yorkshire accent, but he quipped: 'I’d look at their artworks and I’d think, well, if I drew like that, I’d keep my mouth shut'
Painting, drawing, photography, printmaking, stage design, and, later, iPad and digital works… he conquered them all
After becoming a conscientious objector during the Second World War, Kenneth was tormented by neighbours, one painting the word ‘coward’ on the Hockneys’ garden wall every night.
‘Every morning, Dad rose early to wash it off before going to work,’ remembered Hockney’s younger brother John.
Soon after VE Day, Kenneth was fired for his pacifism and by the time David won a scholarship to Bradford Grammar School in 1948, the family were so hard up that he had to wear a secondhand blazer.
To make ends meet, Kenneth started a business selling refurbished bicycles and prams and in his workshop the seeds of his son’s ambition to become an artist were sown.
‘Each of the prams featured decorative lines painted by Dad with a long sable brush,’ recalled John Hockney. ‘David was mesmerised by how straight they were and how, with a twist of his hand, Dad created a perfect serif.’
When he made it to London’s Royal College of Art (R…
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