David Hockney|Illustrations for Six Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm

The Grimm etchings were one of Hockney's most ambitious printmaking projects, and in them he found a new way to build tone on the plate. He gave most of 1969 to them, setting aside his preparations for the double portrait 'Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy' and painting very little that year. Of the tales he considered, he chose six: 'The Little Sea Hare', 'Fundevogel', 'Rapunzel', 'The Boy Who Left Home to Learn Fear', 'Old Rinkrank' and 'Rumpelstilzchen'. What drew him was the telling: "They're fascinating, the little stories," he said, "told in a very simple, direct, straightforward language and style." 'Old Rinkrank' won its place with its opening line, "A King built a glass mountain", and the challenge of drawing one.

Drawing on copper

Hockney drew the plates directly on copper in London between May and November 1969. He made more than 80 etchings for the project, and 39 were published. Cross-hatching, new to his own prints, built tone alongside aquatint: "I just stumbled across it, and thought it was quite a good way to do it." He had studied Hogarth's etchings years before, and Hogarth had already given him the story of 'A Rake's Progress'. The printer Maurice Payne proofed the plates, and Piet Clement printed the edition at his Print Shop in Amsterdam in 1970. The book opens with a portrait of Catherina Dorothea Viehmann, the storyteller who was one of the Grimms' most important sources. Some images drew on sources outside the tales. The first plate of 'The Boy Who Left Home to Learn Fear' began as a drawing Hockney made in Ireland and was not part of the original plan. For the princess trapped inside the glass mountain he looked to Uccello, and as she grew old in her captivity, he said, "I made her short-sighted and ugly, with bits of glass still around so you see her magnified."

Before and after

The series followed 'Illustrations for Fourteen Poems from C.P. Cavafy' (1966), Hockney's 12 etchings for Editions Alecto, and took the illustrated book to a far larger scale. He made it with Paul Cornwall-Jones, who had recently founded Petersburg Press. Kasmin, which co-published the book, gave the etchings a solo exhibition in London in December 1969. Petersburg Press later published 'The Blue Guitar' (1976–77), 20 etchings made at the Crommelynck workshop, where Hockney learnt to print several colours from a single plate. Where the fairy tales relied on etched line and cross-hatching, each 'Blue Guitar' print was printed in five colours. In 1978 the Grimm prints were among the works in Hockney's first solo show at L.A. Louver, the Los Angeles gallery.

At auction

In September 2025 Phillips London sold a set of all six tale volumes from the portfolio edition, without its box and loose etchings, for £5,418 including fees. Single sheets from the portfolio set made less. A signed impression of 'Rapunzel Growing In The Garden', numbered 62/100, made £3,870 including fees at Phillips London in September 2026, and an artist's proof of 'The Haunted Castle' made £3,780 there in January 2023. Complete books with their loose etchings sold for more: an Edition D set made £16,380 at Phillips London in January 2021, and another $27,500 at Phillips New York in April 2017. A single plate came close to that figure in April 2018, when an Edition C impression of 'Home (Signed)' sold for $20,000 at Phillips New York.