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Still
Lifes

In David Hockney’s Still Life series the artist’s long-running interests in optics and perspective come to the fore, along with the obsession with light and shadow that brought him to sunny LA, where most of these print compositions were produced.

David Hockney Still Lifes For sale

Still Lifes Value (5 Years)

Works from the Still Lifes series by David Hockney have a strong market value presence, with 81 auction appearances. Top performing works have achieved standout auction results, with peak hammer prices of £55848. Over the past 12 months, average values across the series have ranged from £3714 to £26424. The series shows an average annual growth rate of 6.56%.

Still Lifes Market value

Annual Sales

Auction Results

ArtworkAuction
Date
Auction
House
Return to
Seller
Hammer
Price
Buyer
Paid
23 Oct 2025
Sotheby's New York
£14,450
£17,000
£24,000
25 Jun 2025
Bonhams New Bond Street
£5,100
£6,000
£7,500
27 May 2025
Artcurial
£6,375
£7,500
£10,000
16 Apr 2025
Christie's New York
£11,475
£13,500
£18,000
19 Sept 2024
Phillips London
£2,508
£2,950
£4,050
31 Jan 2024
Abington Auction Gallery
£4,250
£5,000
£6,000
15 Nov 2023
Sotheby's Online
£3,400
£4,000
£5,500
29 Oct 2022
SBI Art Auction
£29,750
£35,000
£40,000

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Meaning & Analysis

Hockney continually embraces the still-life artistic tradition and his Still Lifes series captures this commitment to unique observation and detail. David Hockney embraces this tradition across his large oeuvre of prints which sees him coming back to the essential elements of observation time and again. Whether in one of his first lithographs,Still Life (silver flowers) or works, we see him giving as much attention to inanimate objects and flowers as in his portraits of his most beloved friends.

Here the artist’s long-running interests in optics and perspective come to the fore, along with his obsessions with light and shadow which brought him to LA, where most of these compositions date from. Objects are studied on a plane, usually a table, with the background left blank as if against a wall, or facing a window, as with the 1969 Still Life. Often a book is placed next to a vase of flowers, adding a third element to the composition, as in Still Life With Book. While many of these works seem to follow a tradition Hockney also subverts the genre to great effect in prints such as Alka Seltzer, an early aquatint study of packaging that recalls his famous Typhoo painting. Not strictly a still life, the work includes a figure surrounded by text, as in the style of Myself and My Heroes. Here the artist takes his familiar practice of paying close attention to an object or logo and transforms it into a living tableau, injecting the still life with a narrative.

Table Flowable also sees Hockney playing with abstraction within the still life genre. Here, loosely formed vases and a roughly sketched apple sit on a table that appears to be in a state of flux. Bulbous flowers emerge from the vessels, their blossoms resembling Calder’s mobiles, giving the composition a sense of dynamism and flow that we have come to recognise from the artist’s work in the ’90s, with print series such as Some New Prints.