A rare painting by David Hockney of his beloved dachshund Stanley is heading to auction at Christie’s, where it carries a high estimate of £2.5 million ($3.3 million).
The work, Dog Painting 17 (1995), shows Stanley curled up asleep on a cushion and is one of more than 40 paintings Hockney made in 1994 and 1995 for his “Dog Series,” devoted entirely to his two dachshunds. It is the first painting from the series ever to come to auction. “This is such an exciting painting for us,” said Tessa Lord, Christie’s head of postwar and contemporary art. “The rarity is kind of extraordinary.”
Christie’s believes only six paintings from the series are in private hands, with the rest held by the David Hockney Foundation. The consignor acquired the work after it appeared in a “Dog Series” exhibition at the L.A. Louver gallery in Venice, California, a show that reportedly drew 7,000 visitors in four days. According to Hockney, many brought their own dogs along.
Stanley, named after silent film star Stan Laurel, was chosen as a puppy by Hockney in 1987 and rarely left his side. He later adopted a second dachshund named Boodgie. The dogs became fixtures of Hockney’s famously social Hollywood Hills home, where, according to his authorized biographer Christopher Simon Sykes, the artist was untroubled by their lack of house training. One friend, Jonathon Brown, recalled the dogs relieving themselves in Hockney's shoes, and, on one occasion, on the floor of actor Dennis Hopper’s Frank Gehry–designed house in Venice. Hockney's response, as Brown told it, was characteristically unbothered, “Oh, it'll be dry in the morning, luv, and you can just pick it up.” Hopper, Brown said, “chose silence, but he looked like murder.”
Hockney began painting Stanley and Boodgie at a difficult moment, after losing several friends to AIDS-related illness and, in particular, following the death of his close friend, the curator Henry Geldzahler, from pancreatic cancer. Hockney later said he had wanted “desperately to paint something loving.” Lord described the “Dog” Series” in similar terms, saying “He felt such a loss of love; this was kind of a catharsis for him.”
Of Dog Painting 17 specifically, she pointed to its “incredible spontaneity” and “fluidity of brushstrokes,” noting the texture built up beneath the cushion and “that slight flick of the ear that really animates Stanley.” She added: “I love the fact that there is this kind of innocence to it, but it is so much more than that. There’s a universality to it… It's so much more than just a portrait of a dog.”
Hockney was hardly alone among artists in finding inspiration in a pet dachshund—both Andy Warhol and Pablo Picasso doted on the breed. Picasso's dachshund Lump appears in his studies for his painting Las Meninas (1957), and Warhol was frequently photographed with his own. ”
“Dog Painting 17” carries an estimate of £1.5 million to £2.5 million ($1.99 million to $3.3 million) and will be sold on October 14, during Frieze Week in London, following the artist’s death this past June at 88. The painting will go on public view, free of charge, at Christie's London galleries beginning October 8th.
from Artsy News https://ift.tt/veuViAf
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