LONDON.- David Hockney’s L’ Arbois, Sainte-Maxime, painted after arriving in London from a magical sojourn to the South of France with his lover in 1968, is set to headline Sotheby’s Contemporary Evening Auction on 9 October in London, with an estimate of £7-10 million. Having been treasured in a private collection for over a decade, since it was last offered at auction at Sotheby’s in 2011, it is returning to public view for the first time, with exhibitions in New York (21–26 September) and London (3–9 October).

In 1966, Hockney met – and quickly fell in love with - Peter Schlesinger, a young Californian art student, who soon became the model in Hockney’ s most important canvases. They first locked eyes at the University of California Santa Cruz, while Schlesinger was attending a six-week drawing course run by the young Hockney, and they quickly became infatuated with one another. At the height of their romance, they travelled to Le Nid du Duc, home of film director Tony Richardson in the South of France. Hockney had first met Richardson while working on set designs for Ubu Roi at the Royal Court Theatre in 1966, and the two instantly struck up a connection, bound by their northern roots and love of southern climes. Hidden in the forest above Saint- Tropez, Richardson’s villa was the perfect bolthole for London artists who were free to indulge themselves in a utopian lifestyle that almost approached the blissful domesticity that Hockney had fallen for in Los Angeles – with long lunches by the pool, followed by glamorous parties into the early hours.

"You can see why Matisse stayed here; the South of France is the best place for colour." -- David Hockney 1

Hockney knew that the Côte d’Azur was a region steeped in artistic history: painters from Claude Monet to Paul Signac and Henri Matisse had flocked there in droves, drawn to its clarity of light, while artists such as Pablo Picasso and Nicolas de Staël would settle in the region. By the 1960s, it had also become an important hub for filmmakers, and made famous by stars such as Brigitte Bardot. Here, in the land that had birthed modern art and cinema, Hockney too would make his mark. Today, Hockney resides between Los Angeles and Normandy.

“I was just overwhelmed by the beauty of the landscape...It’s an artist’s paradise." --David Hockney 2

From Richardson’s hideaway in the hills, Hockney began to explore the surrounding area, armed with his 35mm Pentax camera, extensively photographing scenes and vistas, not merely for snapshots, but for visual information that would help him with his compositions. He voraciously photographed whilst on a quick cruise of the River Rhine, and also in the nearby town of Sainte- Maxime, where he first laid eyes on Hotel L’ Arbois. At the time, Hockney had started to pursue photography as not only a means of artistic expression, but also as an instrument to further develop his draughtsmanship and painterly techniques.

Returning to his London studio, Hockney pinned these images across his studio wall, taking cues from the assemblage to create four paintings, which mark the very first time he would make serious use of his own photographs as inspiration. Among other works hailing from this specific moment in time is Hockney’s depiction of the luminous sunrise on the harbour of the town, Early Morning, Sainte-Maxime, which sold at auction in 2022 for £20. 9 million.

Hockney would return to the region over the next couple of years, he and Schlesinger staying at Le Nid de Duc, where its pool and the fabulous view of the Provencal hills behind, would also become the subject of some of his greatest works, including his poignant tribute to Schlesinger, Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) (1972), which set the artist’ s record at auction in 2017 ($90.3 million).

In all of Hockney’s paintings of the South of France he brings together joyous colours to perfectly encapsulate the majestic skies, glistening waters, and sparkling light. In many ways, they reflect the colour and staturation of his Los Angeles landscapes that came before, while furthering his practice in the direction of the ground-breaking ‘naturalism’ of his double-portraits which would come to define the following decade.

“Painting is more real than photography. It’s got time in it, layers of time.” -- David Hockney 3

The original source for L’ Arbois, Sainte-Maxime was a developed photograph squared up for ease of transition to the canvas, reminiscent of the working processes of the Old Masters in which a cartoon drawing would be transferred by blowing charcoal through pinholes in the paper sheet. Hockney places the motif of the tree centrally, a device he would go on to use in his Yorkshire landscapes. An existing drawing based on the photograph illustrates the development of Hockney’s composition, with the central tree clearly emerging as the primary focus from the outset.

In addition to his own photography and drawing, Hockney also plays with preconceptions associated with the entire grand tradition of landscape painting, and specifically the groundbreaking developments of the twentieth century that had already confronted, appropriated and re-invented the parameters of this legacy - from the flattening of the perspectival picture plane pioneered by Gustav Klimt to Edward Hopper’s unpopulated landscapes. Hockney pares down or leaves out shadows, and instead focuses on the effects of strong sunlight on pure planes of colour, rendering the architecture as abstract blocks of pigment.

L’ Arbois, Sainte- Maxime will be offered in Sotheby’s Contemporary Evening Auction alongside artworks by Andy Warhol, Alexander Calder and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, to name a few.

1 David Hockney quoted in an interview for Financial Times, March 2017
2 David Hockney quoted in an interview for The Guardian, April 23 , 2006
3 David Hockney, quoted in P. Adam, Hockney at Work, BBC documentary 1981