These unseen photographs of David Hockney and his close friends were taken in the summer of 1969 at Le Nid de Duc, the film director Tony Richardson’s hideaway in the hills above St Tropez. The property was to feature as the backdrop for a number of works by Hockney in the next couple of years – most famously in Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures), which was a highlight of the recent Tate Britain retrospective and features in the Modern & Post-War British Art sale in London on 12 & 13 June. The photographs, taken by Kasmin, Hockney’s first dealer, depict the artist’s close friends Peter Schlesinger, the painter Patrick Procktor, a heavily-pregnant Celia Birtwell and her husband Ossie Clark. Le Nid de Duc was to feature as the backdrop for a number of works by Hockney in the next couple of years, with the pool and its fabulous view of the Provencal hills beyond providing a suitably dramatic backdrop to the emotional tie between the swimmer and the man who observes him. Click ahead to see the previously unseen photographs and the work they inspired.
Modern & Post-War British Art
12-13 June 2017 | London