David Hockney|The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate, East Yorkshire in 2011 (Twenty Eleven)
All The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate, East Yorkshire in 2011 (Twenty Eleven) Works By David Hockney (47)
Significance & Analysis
With the Woldgate drawings Hockney used the iPad to follow a landscape as it changed. "The more I got into the iPad, the more I realized what a fantastic medium it is for landscape," he said. He could "rough-in the colors faster than with any other medium" he had used, which let him catch the winter light: "You need a fast method to do that." From January 2011 he drew the same stretch of road again and again, in the open air and, when he needed to see the screen better, back in the studio. By early June he had made 94 drawings.
Printed to fill a room
Late in 2010 Hockney had started printing iPad drawings far larger than the screen. After seeing five or six at full scale he concluded, "my God, you could do the whole room with this method." At the Royal Academy's 'A Bigger Picture', from January to April 2012, 51 of the Woldgate drawings hung in the largest gallery, around the oil painting that gives the series its name. The prints then travelled with the exhibition to the Guggenheim Bilbao and the Museum Ludwig in Cologne. Pace showed them in New York in 2014 and in Beijing in 2015.
At auction
'The Arrival Of Spring In Woldgate East Yorkshire 19th February 2011' made £762,000 with fees at Sotheby's London on 17 October 2025. It was the top lot of a single-owner sale of 17 prints from the series, which made £6.2 million with fees. The remaining 16 prints from the same collection were offered at Sotheby's London in March 2026. A year before the first sale, at Phillips London in September 2024, 'The Arrival Of Spring In Woldgate East Yorkshire 30th April 2011' made £190,500 and 'The Arrival Of Spring In Woldgate East Yorkshire 14th March 2011' £177,800, both with fees.
Before and after
The Woldgate prints grew out of the phone and tablet drawings of 'iPhone and iPad Drawings (2009–2012)'. In 2010 Hockney had already drawn landscapes outdoors on the iPad, among them Yosemite, in the drawings that became 'The Yosemite Suite'. In 2013 he went back to Woldgate with charcoal, drawing the road in five groups of five views for 'Woldgate, The Arrival of Spring in 2013 (twenty thirteen)'. In 2020 he recorded spring again on the iPad, this time at his house in Normandy, in works that belong to his 'iPad Drawings' series.
What Are the Edition Sizes and Formats in The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate, East Yorkshire in 2011 (Twenty Eleven)?
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David Hockney Series
