Woman With A Sewing Machine
Woman With A Sewing Machine
Unsigned Print
David Hockney
34 x 44cm, Edition of 5, Lithograph, 1954
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Meaning & Analysis
Woman With A Sewing Machine is a lithograph made by David Hockney in 1954, when he was a teenager studying in Bradford. This unsigned impression, from an edition of five, shows a woman seated behind a sewing machine against a patterned interior.
The composition is dominated by the black bulk of the machine at the lower left, with a woman in a red blouse seated behind it, her white hair and glasses drawn in lighter, finer line. Behind her the wall is covered in an orange and yellow patterned paper, with blue and yellow checkerboard panel to the right. The colours are laid in flat, separate areas, the black of the machine is the heaviest passage. The subject is a domestic interior of the kind found in British illustration and printmaking of the early 1950s. The approach recalls the work of the period in its flattened colour and decorative pattern. Hockney was born in 1937 and studied at Bradford School of Art from 1953, so this print belongs to the very start of his career, long before the Californian paintings and the later landscapes for which he is best known. It is of interest for that reason, as an early record of his skill in drawing and in the planning of colour for printing.
