Dog Etching No. 10
Signed Print

In 1998 Hockney set up a dedicated print studio in his Hollywood Hills home. Here, he collaborated with his friend Maurice Payne, who would prepare the plates for Hockney to draw directly onto in order to recreate the spontaneity of his original dog drawings. The prints from this series tend to show Hockney’s beloved dachshunds, Stanley and Boodgie sleeping (the only time when Hockney could get them to sit still for a portrait) and are rendered in soft cross hatched marks that convey their wiry fur and classic sausage dog shape. Here we see one of the dogs resting on the arm of a sofa, his pointed face turned towards the floor which echoes the fine lines of the dog’s fur. An intimate portrait, this etching conveys the artist’s love for his dogs who he described as ‘little people’. Hockney became particularly attached to his canine companions after losing so many of his friends to the AIDS crisis, turning the attention he bestowed upon his friends and lovers in earlier portrait series onto these very different subjects as a way of grieving.