David Hockney|20 Flowers and Some Bigger Pictures

The series follows Hockney indoors at the start of 2021, from the Normandy countryside he had been drawing for a year to a vase on his own table. He turned to the flowers after finishing his long iPad scroll 'A Year in Normandie'. "I was just sitting at the table in our house, and I caught sight of some flowers in a vase on the table," he recalled. A second picture used the same ceramic vase. "I then realized if I put the flowers in a glass vase the sun would catch the water, and painting glass would be a more interesting thing to do," he said. Each title opens with a date, from '30th January 2021, The First One' to '21st April 2021, Yellow Flowers in a Small Milk Churn'. The flowers grew out of his Normandy iPad pictures of 2020, part of his wider 'iPad Drawings', and they work the same way, as a dated sequence. From one picture to the next, the arrangement, the colour of the tablecloth and sometimes the flowers themselves change.

The bigger pictures

The landscapes in the series build one image from several iPad paintings. 'August 2021, Landscape with Shadows' joins twelve of them in a single print mounted on Dibond, and '10th – 22nd June 2021, Water Lilies in the Pond with Pots of Flowers' joins six across two sheets, mounted on two Dibond panels. Their gridded picture planes show the Normandy summer of 2021, a way of building a scene that has been linked to the Bayeux Tapestry and Chinese scrolls. Five galleries shared the exhibition, which opened in November 2022 in London, Paris, Chicago and Los Angeles. Its last venue was Pace in New York, where it closed in February 2023. "I think it's what we need today," Hockney said. "New looking fresh pictures of a very beautiful world." At the centre of the exhibition hung '25th June 2022, Looking at the Flowers (Framed)', a photographic drawing assembled from many photographs. Hockney appears in it twice, seated in an armchair, looking at the 20 flowers hung salon-style on a navy-blue wall. "This is photographic but is in no way an ordinary photograph," he said.

At auction

'7th March 2021, More Flowers On A Table' made £56,700 at Christie's London in March 2023. The same print sold for £40,640 at Phillips London that September. Phillips also sold '2nd March 2021, A Closer Look at Some Tulips' for £35,560 in September 2024 and '4th February 2021, Flowers in a White Vase with Chair' for £33,020 in January 2025. All four prices include fees.