DAVID HOCKNEY (b. 1937)
View From Terrace III, 2003
Watercolor on paper, in eight sheets
Overall: 36 1/8 x 95 7/8 inches (91.8 x 243.5 cm)
Signed and dated 2003 (lower right)

Provenance
L.A. Louver, Venice, California
Private Collection, New York (acquired from the above in 2004)
Edward Tyler Nahem Fine Art, New York
Acquired from the above in May 2006 by the present owner

Auction History
Sotheby’s New-York: 15 November 2023
Estimated: USD 4,000,000 – 6,000,000
USD 7,228,500
WORK ON PAPER

View From Terrace III | Contemporary Evening Auction | 2023 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

 

Imbued with the bright glow of California sunshine and remarkably scaled across eight sheets of paper, View From Terrace III is a superb exemplar of David Hockney’s rare watercolor exterior scenes of his Hollywood Hills home. Upon his return to California in 2003 from a nearly year-long stay in London where his practice focused primarily on portrait drawings, Hockney immersed himself in watercolor painting, his spirited home soon becoming a favorite subject. Executed that same year, View From Terrace III displays Hockney at his best: rich with saturated color, complex in composition, and generously detailed. The blue porch of his abode, spanning the entirety of the scene in View From Terrace III, colorfully dotted with potted plants, is one of the most iconic motifs within the artist’s visual lexicon: a subject that Hockney returned to and reworked repeatedly, testifying to the magnitude of the present subject within the artist’s oeuvre. View From Terrace III is one of only 11 known watercolors of Hockney’s Hollywood Hill’s home exterior; notably, View from Terrace II, the sister painting to the present work, resides in the collection of the Museum Würth, Kunzelsau. An intimate, lush paradise overlooking the atmospheric cosmopolitan vista of Los Angeles, View From Terrace III embodies a commitment to gesture and emotive depth characteristic of Hockney’s vibrant and inviting oeuvre.

DAVID HOCKNEY ON THE PORCH OF HIS LOS ANGELES HOME, 1987. PHOTO © ANTHONY BARBOZA/GETTY IMAGES

Hockney purchased his home on Montcalm Avenue in the Hollywood Hills area of Los Angeles in the summer of 1979 and transformed it into an aesthetic paradise. The design of his home reflects the liveliness, propensity for color, and unconventionality which distinguishes his artistic style, so much so that his home, the patio, and surrounding landscaping became pivotal subject matter within his paintings of the time. Skewed structural geometries and unconventional angles painted in bright cobalt blues, cool pinks, and reds frame a backyard of dense, varied foliage, merging the glowing aura of California pop with overflowing natural growth. Thus, Hockney’s home, a colorful fantasy, seeped into his work, not only as reference to his inspirational environment itself, but as an ode to California itself. View From Terrace III exhibits this California idealism in an expansive panorama of sprawling trees, thick ivy, and potted cacti against Hockney’s iconic blue patio fence. While the focus of the composition is his porch, Hockney still highlights his beloved city, hazily rendered in the background.

Painted in 2003, the present work represents a pivotal moment in Hockney’s life and artistic career. Following a return to London in the late 1990s, Hockney was honored as the subject of two important exhibitions at the Centre Pompidou and Musée Picasso in 1999, after which he began a fascination with the camera lucida, an optical device used as a drawing aid. His output was primarily focused on camera lucida drawings until 2002, when a visit to an exhibition of Chinese watercolors at the Metropolitan Museum of Art spurred his interest in painting again. By 2003, Hockney had returned to his cherished Los Angeles home, bringing his newfound love of watercolor painting with him. Here, Hockney brilliantly capitalizes on the formal qualities of the medium, embracing the inherent ebb and flow of pigment. While Hockney pools the watercolor to yield concentrated, vivid, vibrant tones, he also captures unparalleled intricate detail indicative of his mastery. Only watercolor can achieve the formal nuances present in this composition with a remarkable purity of color and exquisite fullness. View from Terrace III reflects Hockney’s mastery of the watercolor medium, one that he has turned back to throughout his storied oeuvre.