Name: Godetia
Brand: David Hockney
Rating: 5 (235 reviews)

Track auction value trend

The value of David Hockney's Godetia (signed) is estimated to be worth between £16,000 and £24,000. This intaglio print was created in 1973 and has shown consistent value growth, with an average annual growth rate of 8%. This work has an auction history of 11 total sales since its entry to the market in June 2004. In the last 12 months, there have been no sales. Over the past five years, the hammer price has ranged from £11,520 in June 2024 to £13,208 in November 2023. The average return to the seller over the past five years is £10,509. The edition size of this artwork is limited to 100.

Meaning & Analysis

This elegant intaglio by David Hockney is notable for its almost watercolour like properties. Here he takes godetia flowers as his subject, showing them stuffed as a full bouquet into an elegant white vase. The flowers spill out over the top competing for attention, their dark green foliage complementing the reds, pinks and purples of their blooms.

read more about Flowers

The background is plain, as is usual in many of Hockney's still lifes, and the vessel that holds the flowers does little to draw attention away from them. A shadow on the left tells us that the light source is coming from the right but there are no other clues to the room in which the flowers sit. Flowers have always been an important part of the still life genre, featuring in grandiose 17th century paintings or in looser configurations for the subject by modernists such as Matisse, and Hockney’s interest in them sometimes appears to be academic as well as aesthetic. Taking tulips, lilies, godetia or daisies as his subject he produces careful studies of each flower, that, appearing as spontaneous and vivid as his sketches, belie the many hours of observation that have made him the master of perspective and representation he is today.