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Lot Essay
‘… as I flew over San Bernardino and looked down—and saw the swimming pools and the houses and everything and the sun, I was more thrilled than I’ve ever been arriving at any other city’ (David Hockney)
Dating from a seminal moment in David Hockney’s practice, the present work is an exquisite drawing depicting two of his most important subjects: the swimming pool, and his first true love Peter Schlesinger. Executed in Encino, Los Angeles shortly after the two met, it is Hockney’s first drawing of the man who would transform his life and work. Schlesinger epitomised everything that the artist had dreamed of when he had arrived in California two years previously. So, too, did the swimming pool, its sun-kissed waters sparkling with the promise of new artistic challenges. Hockney’s pairing of these two subjects would give rise to some of his greatest paintings, including the 1966 masterpiece Peter Getting Out Of Nick’s Pool (Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool) and the career-defining Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) (1972). In Peter, Swimming Pool, Encino, California, Schlesinger’s lithe form comes to life against a backdrop of undulating blue, its looping, cellular jigsaw so distinctly characteristic of Hockney’s early pool paintings.
It was in the summer of 1966, while teaching a six-week drawing course at the University of California Los Angeles, that Hockney first encountered Schlesinger. He was a history student at the university’s Santa Cruz campus, and a promising young artist. ‘On the first day of class the professor walked in’, recalls Schlesinger; ‘—he was a bleached blond; wearing a tomato-red suit, a green and white polka-dot tie with a matching hat … I was drawn to him because he was quite different’ (P. Schlesinger, quoted in C. S. Sykes, Hockney: The Biography. Volume 1 1937-1975, London 2011, p. 180). The two became friends, then lovers. ‘It was incredible to me to meet in California a young, very sexy, attractive boy who was also curious and intelligent’, explained Hockney. ‘In California you can meet curious and intelligent people, but generally they’re not the sexy boy of your fantasy as well’ (D. Hockney, quoted in M. Livingstone and K. Haymer, Hockney’s Portraits and People, London 2003, p. 81). Their relationship etched its way into Hockney’s art over the following years. So, too, did their breakup in 1971, giving rise to devastating masterworks such as Sur la Terrasse and Still Life on a Glass Table.
Arriving in Los Angeles in 1964, Hockney was immediately captivated by the city’s swimming pools. He had first noticed them from the plane: tiny blue specks that spoke of affluence, leisure and a new life far from the dreary streets of post-war England. His attempts to depict the mercurial properties of water over the following years would breathe new life into his art. ‘It is a formal problem to represent water, to describe water, because it can be anything’, he wrote; ‘—it can be any colour, it’s movable, it has no set visual description’ (D. Hockney, quoted in N. Stangos (ed.), Pictures by David Hockney, London 1979, p. 48). The present drawing shares much in common with Hockney’s very first pool paintings, such as California (1965), which drew upon the lessons of Jean Dubuffet’s Hourloupe works. There are echoes, too, of Matisse, Seurat and Cezanne, reflecting Hockney’s engagement with European Modernism. With its razor-sharp draughtsmanship, the work quivers with the joy of fresh inspiration, bathed in the glow of not one but two new loves.
Dating from a seminal moment in David Hockney’s practice, the present work is an exquisite drawing depicting two of his most important subjects: the swimming pool, and his first true love Peter Schlesinger. Executed in Encino, Los Angeles shortly after the two met, it is Hockney’s first drawing of the man who would transform his life and work. Schlesinger epitomised everything that the artist had dreamed of when he had arrived in California two years previously. So, too, did the swimming pool, its sun-kissed waters sparkling with the promise of new artistic challenges. Hockney’s pairing of these two subjects would give rise to some of his greatest paintings, including the 1966 masterpiece Peter Getting Out Of Nick’s Pool (Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool) and the career-defining Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) (1972). In Peter, Swimming Pool, Encino, California, Schlesinger’s lithe form comes to life against a backdrop of undulating blue, its looping, cellular jigsaw so distinctly characteristic of Hockney’s early pool paintings.
It was in the summer of 1966, while teaching a six-week drawing course at the University of California Los Angeles, that Hockney first encountered Schlesinger. He was a history student at the university’s Santa Cruz campus, and a promising young artist. ‘On the first day of class the professor walked in’, recalls Schlesinger; ‘—he was a bleached blond; wearing a tomato-red suit, a green and white polka-dot tie with a matching hat … I was drawn to him because he was quite different’ (P. Schlesinger, quoted in C. S. Sykes, Hockney: The Biography. Volume 1 1937-1975, London 2011, p. 180). The two became friends, then lovers. ‘It was incredible to me to meet in California a young, very sexy, attractive boy who was also curious and intelligent’, explained Hockney. ‘In California you can meet curious and intelligent people, but generally they’re not the sexy boy of your fantasy as well’ (D. Hockney, quoted in M. Livingstone and K. Haymer, Hockney’s Portraits and People, London 2003, p. 81). Their relationship etched its way into Hockney’s art over the following years. So, too, did their breakup in 1971, giving rise to devastating masterworks such as Sur la Terrasse and Still Life on a Glass Table.
Arriving in Los Angeles in 1964, Hockney was immediately captivated by the city’s swimming pools. He had first noticed them from the plane: tiny blue specks that spoke of affluence, leisure and a new life far from the dreary streets of post-war England. His attempts to depict the mercurial properties of water over the following years would breathe new life into his art. ‘It is a formal problem to represent water, to describe water, because it can be anything’, he wrote; ‘—it can be any colour, it’s movable, it has no set visual description’ (D. Hockney, quoted in N. Stangos (ed.), Pictures by David Hockney, London 1979, p. 48). The present drawing shares much in common with Hockney’s very first pool paintings, such as California (1965), which drew upon the lessons of Jean Dubuffet’s Hourloupe works. There are echoes, too, of Matisse, Seurat and Cezanne, reflecting Hockney’s engagement with European Modernism. With its razor-sharp draughtsmanship, the work quivers with the joy of fresh inspiration, bathed in the glow of not one but two new loves.