Black Tulips
Signed Print

This beautifully inky still life of tulips is unusual in its portrayal of the popular Dutch flower in a pot rather than a vase. Rooted into the soil they spill out over the white space of the composition as if reaching towards an unseen light source. The pot and its accompanying plate is positioned on a side table or plant stand covered in a patterned cloth. Its single wooden leg appears fluted and here we can see Hockney’s eye for detail, and his mastery of lithography as a medium which the artist had been working with for over a decade by the time this print was made. Here he plays with various textures and marks, to evoke the different surfaces, from the dark black of the tulips’ petals to the smudgy grey of the pot and the fine lines of the leaves. While the backgrounds to Hockney’s still lifes are often spare and strangely empty, he makes sure to include shadows in order to root the subject in space. Hockney returned to the still life, and particularly flowers, many times over the course of his career. Inspired by masters such as Matisse and Morandi as well as the beauty of nature itself, he has produced images of flowers across paintings, drawings, etchings, lithographs, photocopier prints and even ipad drawings.