David Hockney 20th March 2021, Flowers, Glass Vase on a Table For Sale

David Hockney’s 20^th March 2021, Flowers, Glass Vase on a Table, 2021 is another still life portrait of flowers taken from his Normandy home during the second year of the global lockdown. For the first time in this series, 20 Flowers and Some Bigger Pictures, Hockney gives this artwork a specific date as he spent the months of February and March observing flowers hit by the low sun of the changing seasons.

‘I noticed these flowers with very strong shadows from low sun in February.  I did it and pinned it on a wall and looked at it for a while, then I did another with a chair, and then I did another with some glass in it. I thought glass is a very interesting subject to draw.’

In this artwork a transparent glass vase full of water is sitting in the middle of a table on a blue gingham tablecloth: a mixed bunch of flowers are sitting in the vase made up of purple, yellow, white stems. The simple portrait pays homage to the traditional still life of Matisse with its rich texture, the strong burgundy background, as well as the emotion that the artist puts into his flowers as deeply as in his depiction of humans.

Hockney says of 20^th March 2021, Flowers, Glass Vase on a Table, 2021: ‘I then realized if I put the flowers in a glass vase the sun would catch the water, and painting glass would be a more interesting thing to do. So then I was off.”

20^th March 2021, Flowers, Glass Vase on a Table, 2021 is illustrative of Hockney’s famous dictum that ‘the eye has to move.’ The still life flowers that make up this series, 20 Flowers and Some Bigger Pictures, essentially depict the same thing but in variation of colour, style and form they become individualist expressions of colour, renewal and rebirth.