David Hockney|Dog Wall (Dog Etchings)

The set records Hockney's dogs as he found them at home, in 15 etchings drawn in a single year of work with the printer Maurice Payne. Stanley and Boodgie had been a subject of his paintings and drawings since 1993. In 1998 Hockney took up etching again, and he and Payne, an old friend he had worked with before, set up a print studio in his house in the Hollywood Hills. Payne left prepared plates around the rooms, and Hockney drew on them through the day; the dogs were among the household subjects he chose. The same months produced the still lifes and portraits of 'Recent Etchings (1998)'. To make an etching, the artist draws through an acid-resistant coating on a metal plate; acid bites the exposed lines, and the plate is then inked and printed.

The editions

The 15 plates differ in scale and format. Small sheets such as 'Dog Etching No. 1' and 'Dog Etching No. 6' measure about 32 x 36 cm. 'Dog Etching No. 4' fills a landscape sheet of 56.8 x 76 cm, and 'Dog Etching No. 10' a portrait sheet of 64.8 x 56.5 cm. Pace Prints showed 'Dog Wall' in New York as an exhibition of its own, from November to December 1999. In 2018 the gallery recreated the show of Hockney's 1998 etchings it had held twenty years earlier, as 'David Hockney: Etchings', with 'Dog Wall' as the centrepiece and impressions the Hockney archives had kept since then.

Before and after

Hockney had etched the dogs before. In 'Dogs and Sunflowers (Lococo Mulder, 1995)' he printed them in colour aquatint, in editions of 80. 'Dog Wall' set colour aside for black and white, came in a far smaller edition and gathered 15 images under one title rather than a few separate prints.

At auction

In January 2023 a complete set made £327,600 at Phillips London. Another complete set made £317,500 at Phillips London in September 2024. Single sheets made far less. 'Dog Etching No. 1' made $15,000 at Phillips New York in April 2019, and 'Dog Etching No. 6' made $22,050 there in October 2022. At Phillips London on 19 September 2026, 'Dog Etching No. 6' made £30,960 and 'Dog Etching No. 5' made £54,180. All these figures include fees.