David Hockney|Illustrations for Fourteen Poems from C.P. Cavafy

In the Cavafy etchings Hockney pictured love between young men openly and calmly, in a spare line that suits the plain, frank voice of the poems. "Of course Cavafy's poems are about gay love," he said, "and I was quite boldly using that subject then." The etchings have been called his gay manifesto. They appeared in the same year as the Sexual Offences Act of 1967, which partly decriminalised homosexuality in England and Wales.

Alexandria by way of Beirut and London

Hockney found Cavafy's poems as a student in 1960, in an English anthology from the Bradford public library that he never returned. By 1961 he had already taken the title of an etching, 'Kaisarion With All His Beauty', from a Cavafy poem. The poems belong to Cavafy's Alexandria, but by 1966 Hockney felt the city had changed too much. At the start of that year he went to Beirut instead and drew its everyday street life. Only four of the plates have a Middle Eastern setting, among them the portrait of the poet. Most of the others grew from drawings of a friend in London. Hockney worked variously from life, from his drawings and from photographs, and the couples he drew could belong almost anywhere. Back in London, Hockney and the printer Maurice Payne printed the plates at Alecto Studios. Eight of the 12 combine etched line with aquatint, which adds areas of tone; the other four are line alone. In the book the etchings sit beside a new English translation of the poems by Nikos Stangos and Stephen Spender. Hockney first showed the 12 etchings in July 1966, in a solo exhibition at the Kasmin gallery in London, alongside his drawings for the stage sets of 'Ubu Roi'. In 2010 'In The Dull Village' was chosen as object 97 in 'A History of the World in 100 Objects', the British Museum and BBC radio series.

Before and after

The series brought Hockney back to etching after 'A Hollywood Collection' (1965), the colour lithographs he made in Los Angeles. It shares its publisher and its medium with 'A Rake's Progress' (1961–63). That portfolio turned Hogarth's moral tale into a story about Hockney himself; the Cavafy plates follow the mood of the poems instead of telling a story. He went on to a larger illustrated book in 'Illustrations for Six Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm', 39 etchings made in 1969 and published by Petersburg Press in 1970.

At auction

At Phillips London in September 2022, 'The Beginning', numbered 49 of 75, sold for £8,820 including fees, twice the £4,410 paid in the same sale for 'He Enquired After The Quality'. A year later, again at Phillips London, another impression of 'He Enquired After The Quality' and an artist's proof of 'The Shop Window Of A Tobacco Store' each made £2,540. In April 2025 a proof of 'Portrait of Cavafy II' sold for £4,608 including fees in a Bonhams online sale in London. Earlier, in December 2013, Phillips London sold a complete Edition E set of artist's proofs on vellum for £27,500 including fees.