David Hockney Marguerites (M.C.A.T. 141) For Sale

This elegant and simple print was created by David Hockney in 1973. The print depicts a handful of the titular marguerite daisies spilling out of the small glass tumbler they are placed within. Hockney’s mastery of the etching medium is exemplified within this print, as the flowers and their colours are rendered so delicately and softly Marguerites echoes more that of a watercolour or oil pastel than an etching. Hockney adds an explosion of colour, of various shades of blues, greens and yellows. This contrasts beautifully with the white petals of the daisy, which is barely discernible against the white background. There is a real sense of liminal space within this print, as the only depth or perspective is added through a group of sketched lines to act as a shadow alluding to a light source. Furthermore, Hockney masterfully captures the distortion of this light through the glass, as the green shades contort at the bottom of the tumbler.
Flowers are a subject that Hockney returns to repeatedly throughout his artistic oeuvre. His fascination with capturing flower still life’s emphasises his awareness and knowledge of history of art. Throughout history, whether it be from the Dutch Golden Age or the Impressionists, the pinnacle of artist technique was seen to be their ability to render flowers, and this screenprint is Hockney’s addition to this art historical canon, reinventing the traditional tropes through the Pop Art imagination. Hockney’s Pop Art contemporary Andy Warhol also explored the flower still life in his Flowers series, where he transformed the natural into the artificial. This print acts as an art historical homage to the past and a vision for the still life’s of the future.