David Hockney|The Weather Series (1973)

'The Weather Series' was the second major suite Hockney made at Gemini, eight years after he first worked there with the master printer Kenneth Tyler on 'A Hollywood Collection'. It drew on Japanese prints and on Monet's serial paintings, and in some sheets the printing itself becomes part of the weather.

Weather in the Japanese manner

Hockney travelled to Japan in 1971, and the series takes its cue partly from the way Japanese prints picture weather. The clearest borrowing is in 'Wind'. In Hokusai's woodblock print 'Ejiri in Suruga Province' (c. 1830–32), a sudden gust carries sheets of paper into the sky. Hockney's sheets are his own prints: 'Rain', 'Sun', 'Snow' and 'Mist' spin through the air. Below them stands a Melrose Avenue street sign with a 'left turn only' arrow, marking the street where Gemini had its workshop. The bands of graded tone across 'Snow' recall Japanese woodcuts, and the hazy palm trees of 'Mist' have been compared with Claude Monet's paintings of poplars and his studies of light.

Printing the weather

Five of the six combine lithography with screenprint; 'Mist' is catalogued as a lithograph alone. 'Rain' shows most plainly how the process could carry the subject. Hockney drew it in runny washes of lithographic ink, and the drops spill out of the image into the margin below. "I loved the idea of the rain as it hit the ink [and] it would make the ink run," he said.

States, studies and related editions

Gemini also published a run of related prints in 1973. 'Sun, State I' is an earlier state of 'Sun', issued as a print in its own right. 'Snow Without Colour' is printed in black, grey and white only. 'Dark Mist' and 'Ten Palm Trees in the Mist' return to mist in lithograph alone. 'Study of Lightning Medium' and 'Small Study of Lightning' are smaller lithographs of lightning.

After the weather

Later in 1973 Hockney moved to Paris, and his printmaking turned from colour lithography to etching, which he took up with the printer Aldo Crommelynck. The colour etchings of 'A Simple Heart (Gustave Flaubert)', made there in 1973 and 1974, followed.

At auction

'Snow' sold at Phillips London in September 2024, 2025 and 2026, for £50,800, £70,950 and £54,180, all including fees. 'Mist' made £36,830 in the 2024 sale, and 'Lightning' £21,930 in 2025. Of the related prints, 'Ten Palm Trees in the Mist' made £50,000 at Phillips London in September 2019, twice the £25,000 paid there for 'Dark Mist' that January.