David Hockney's 5 Most Famous Paintings

In this article, we take a look at five of Hockney’s most famous paintings to trace the development of the artist’s style, subject matter and process, from his beginnings in the bohemian London of the 1960s to his colourful depictions of California to his more sombre portraits of his parents just before their death.

Hockney’s enduring cultural relevance has been reaffirmed in recent years by a renewed wave of major institutional exhibitions. In 2025, David Hockney 25 at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris brought together more than 400 works spanning seven decades, marking the largest retrospective ever dedicated to the artist. Running in parallel with this show, the immersive exhibition David Hockney: Bigger & Closer (not smaller & further away) has continued to tour internationally, introducing new audiences to his lifelong experiments with perception, technology and ways of seeing.

After enjoying newfound success in London, where he had just sold his piece A Rake’s Progress (1963) – a contemporary reworking of Hogarth’s series of the same name – for a large sum, Hockney moved his studio from dreary post-war London to glamorous California. There, he encountered a sexually liberated atmosphere; whilst homosexuality was still illegal in the UK, gay culture was booming in Los Angeles, allowing Hockney a greater degree of both artistic and personal freedom. The swimming pool became a landmark of Hockney’s paintings, representing the exuberance, wealth and sexual intrigue of American culture.

In The Splash, the painting’s bright tones bring the Californian landscape to life, and the realistic style of the splash itself gives the painting a sense of immediacy, and yet also a sense that the viewer has just missed the action.

In 2006, The Splash sold for £2.9 million to an anonymous buyer. The work was subsequently resold in 2020 at a Sotheby’s auction in London to an anonymous buyer for the princely sum of £23.1 million. As demand for high-value art has surged, so has Hockney's market value, exemplified in 2018 when his Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) sold for over £70 million, setting an auction record at the time for a living artist.

While the 2018 sale of Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) marked a historic peak, Hockney’s market has continued to demonstrate depth rather than volatility. Demand remains strongest for early Californian paintings and psychologically charged double portraits, supported by sustained momentum in the print market. This was underscored in October 2025, when a dedicated Sotheby’s sale of works from The Arrival of Spring series achieved a strong sell-through and exceeded pre-sale expectations, reaffirming long-term collector confidence in Hockney’s most recognisable bodies of work.

Although Hockney was living in California at the time of this painting’s creation, he was very much still embedded in the bohemian London scene of the 1960s and 1970s, as the portrait’s subject indicates. The painting depicts the fashion designer Ossie Clark and the textile designer Celia Birtwell in their flat in Notting Hill Gate shortly after their wedding, where Hockney had been the best man.

Like many of Hockney’s depictions of London, the painting’s colours are rather muted and its figures are painted contre jour (against the light), with the couple’s glamorous but dark clothes and interior decor clashing against the brightness of the cat’s fur. The half-closed shutters, which open out slightly to reveal a sunny balcony and tree below, give a glimpse of a world outside the darkened room. The painting is often thought to recall the famous Arnolfini Marriage (1434) by the Flemish renaissance painter Jan Van Eyck, in which a small dog rests at the couple’s feet. Hockney’s version resets this classic portrayal of love and fidelity within the glamorous 1970s London art scene, whose dark palette casts a somewhat melancholic air over the piece.

Whilst this painting retains the bright colour palette of Hockney’s swimming pool paintings, its subject matter is far more sombre. Hockney was living in Paris at the time of the painting, which he completed on a visit back to Bradford. The depiction of his parents seems slightly strained; whilst his mother stares directly into the “lens” of the painting, his father (who died just a year after the painting was completed) is bent over a book, his face partially obscured by the position.

Colour also plays an important part in their characterisation, with the bright blue of his mother’s dress, the furniture and flowers contrasting with the comparative drabness of his father’s clothes. The distance between the two figures and their different gazes speaks of isolation and restraint, perhaps reflecting Hockney’s view of his home in light of liberated Paris and California.

Painted in 1968, Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy marks a pivotal moment in Hockney’s Californian period, bringing together portraiture, queer visibility and the quiet psychology that would come to define his mature style. The large-scale double portrait depicts the writer Christopher Isherwood and the artist Don Bachardy, who were partners for more than three decades, seated side by side yet subtly detached. Though physically close, the figures do not meet one another’s gaze, creating a charged emotional distance that feels deliberate.

The flat planes of colour, minimal interior and restrained palette reflect his growing interest in clarity and compositional control, moving away from the expressive textures of his earlier work. Isherwood appears thoughtful, while Bachardy, younger by thirty years, looks outward with an alertness. The imbalance in age, experience and temperament is embedded in the painting’s structure, making it a study of relationship dynamics as much as likeness.

As one of Hockney’s most significant portraits of the late 1960s, Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy also carries broader cultural weight. At a time when same-sex relationships were rarely depicted with seriousness, Hockney presents the couple without symbolism or spectacle. The result is a painting that feels intimate but modern. Within the canon of David Hockney portraits, it stands as a landmark work that quietly asserts love, partnership and identity within the sunlit calm of his Californian world.