Autour De La Maison, Hiver
Signed Print

This forty-foot-long panorama was created from original line drawings, and displays a sweeping view of the French countryside with its local 17th-century vernacular architecture. Created shortly after Hockney’s exhibition at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam in 2019, the print shares a strong visual affinity with Rembrandt van Rijn and Vincent Van Gogh. Signs of inspiration can be seen in Hockney’s use of Van Gogh’s favourite graphic devices, such as coloured inks and dots that cover the ground and alleys depicted in the lower part of the panorama. Offering a wide-angle, expansive view of the French countryside, the print attests to the artist’s need to experiment with the pictorial space and transform the conventional ways of looking at artworks. Hockney commented in this context: “What does the world really look like? I know it doesn’t look like photographs. The camera sees geometrically, and we must see psychologically. So what does it really look like? I think you have to draw it.”