David Hockney

William Hardie Gallery, Glasgow, whence purchased by the present owner

The board is in good overall condition. The paint surface is intentionally uneven and is in good overall condition. There is a fleck of paint loss in the upper right quadrant. There is a cut to the paint surface in the lower left quadrant that was clearly executed when the paint was still wet. There is no sign of retouching under ultra-violet light. Held in a wooden frame.
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The present work appears to have been painted circa 1956, whilst Hockney was studying at Bradford School of Art. Hockney's training at the school was traditional, the bulk of his work focusing on studies from life. His paintings from this early period appear to focus specifically on his immediate environment. Bolton Junction, Eccleshill (1956; Bradford Art Galleries and Museums), like the present work, presents a landscape carefully studied by Hockney, who would make sketches which would then be worked up into finished paintings. The academic training displayed in these landscapes from the late 1950s is combined with an innovative composition, choice of palette and paint technique, skills that would stand Hockney in good stead when he arrived at the Royal College of Art in 1959. It is interesting to consider, however, how Hockney would return to painting these landscapes of northern England fifty years later.

In Study of Trees in a Landscape Hockney has broken the landscape up into a series of flat plains of subdued colour. His viewpoint is such that the trees in the right foreground occupy almost half of the landscape. The thick dark leafless branches form a decorative web through which small sections of the horizon appear. The work is not abstract, but it certainly concerns itself with the treatment of the picture plane as an experimental surface.

After two years of National Service during which Hockney worked as a hospital orderly, he moved to London and began his studies at the Royal College of Art, where he met R.B. Kitaj, Allen Jones and Patrick Caulfield, and where Francis Bacon, Richard Hamilton, Joe Tilson, Peter Blake and Richard Smith would arrive as visiting artists.