Name: Poolside
Brand: David Hockney
Rating: 4.9 (224 reviews)

Track auction value trend

The value of David Hockney’s Poolside (signed) is estimated to be worth between £2,050 and £3,050. This digital print, created in 1970, has shown a consistent value growth, with an average annual growth rate of 6%. This work has an auction history of one sale in the last 12 months, on 11th December 2023, with a hammer price of £3,666. In the past five years, the average return to the seller has been £3,116. The edition size of this artwork is limited to 25.

Auction Date

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Artwork

Hammer Price

Return to Seller

Buyer Paid

December 2023

Bonhams Online - United Kingdom

Poolside - Signed Print

Meaning & Analysis

This signed digital print is by much-loved and internationally renowned British artist, David Hockney, and belongs to the Photographs collection. Issued in a limited edition of 25 in 1970, relatively early in Hockney’s career, it features one of the artist’s most-depicted scenes – a swimming pool bathed in the afternoon sun.

This signed photographic print by British artist David Hockney was first issued in a limited edition of 25 in 1970: a year which saw the young artist’s career greatly celebrated in the form of a retrospective exhibition held at London’s Whitechapel Gallery. Like the 1970 retrospective, which ran from April to May in London before going on to tour various locations around the world, this signed print is testament to the importance of photography to Hockney’s artistic œuvre. In it, we can see three deck chairs – each of which recall the etching, Mo Asleep, produced the following year – positioned at the poolside. The scene’s bright colours and palm trees evoke California: one of Hockney’s most-loved subjects, and a location he first moved to from cold, grey and expensive postwar London in 1964. Flanked by palm trees, in the rear of the composition we can see the bold and rigid forms of an art nouveau style building, which presumably interested Hockney due to its formal clarity and the way it casts shadow. A photographic snapshot of a leisurely scene of the kind that fascinated Hockney during the 1970s in particular, it recalls other prints in the Photographs collection, such as John St Clair Swimming (1972).