David Hockney The Weather Series For Sale | Andipa Editions

Hockney’s The Weather Series,1973, is one of his most visually captivating print sequences, in which he explores all forms of weather and climate, through the prism of his long time fascination with Japanese culture. It was also the first time he reached new technical mastery by fusing screen printing and lithography, a technique he continued with in his Moving Focus series, 1984 (see Moving Focus viewing room)

In The Weather Series, each lithograph depicts a different weather condition: Mist, Rain, Sunshine, Wind, Lightning, Snow. As Hockney observed to his collaborator, the master printer, Kenneth Tyler, ‘the subject matter is really the weather drawn, not just the weather itself.’ 

The Weather Series, like much of Hockney’s multifarious oeuvre, conveys his deep knowledge of art history and connects him to canonized artists from centuries past: other notable artists to have studied the weather include old master, JM Turner and 18th century Japanese painter and printmaker, Hokusai. Interestingly it was also Hokusai’s famed u-kioye woodblock techniques, which influenced pop art luminary, Roy Lichtenstein in his Water Lilies series (see Roy Lichtenstein viewing room)

Hockney first visited Japan in 1971 after his split from lover Peter Schlesinger and it inspired many of his paintings, such as Mount Fuji and Flowers, with the traditions continuing to influence him in prints for The Weather Series.

The starting point for depicting the weather first came to Hockney, however, on a trip to sunny California from the harsh winds of his Yorkshire hometown, as seen in Mist, featuring LA’s iconic palm trees (they also reference the poplar trees along the River Epte painted by Monet), and Wind, even depicts a road sign for Melrose Avenue. However, famed LA printmaking studio, Gemini, where he made most of the series humorously admitted, it was ‘because Los Angeles has no weather.’ Hockney admits to venturing to Palm Springs to try and find some snow.  And, in an attempt to create intangible weather conditions, Hockney ended up diversifying and boldly exploring new printmaking techniques; from diluting lithographic ink causing it to spill and run down the lithograph (Rain), using a broom to brush ink on the lithographic stone (Rain) to using repetitive horizontal bands of different tones (Snow). It was also in the print, Lightning, where Hockney unexpectedly used the landscape style featuring winding roads and hills, which many of his later and most seminal works depicting his Yorkshire surroundings include.

The Weather Series is one of Hockney’s most dynamic sequences where he interweaves many of his favourite cultural motifs and passions through his exquisite colourist’s eye and the precision of a master printmaker. The Weather Series elegantly converges Eastern and Western philosophies and artistic traditions; the artist manages to ignite an emotional response in the viewer as if we are actually caught in these seasonal weather conditions.