Two Vases In The Louvre
Signed Print

While many of Hockney’s still lifes denote a domestic setting here the artist has chosen to depict two vases in perhaps the most famous museum in the world, the Louvre. Here these great urns, presumably antique, are placed in front of a large window, or pair of french doors, through which a beautiful diffused light illuminates the scene. The vases are lacking in detail and while the print is named after them it almost seems as if Hockney was more interested in demonstrating the effect of this light on the scene rather than the objects themselves. In this way the work differs greatly from many of the still lifes Hockney produced in this period which see him bestowing his attention on the details of flowers, books, vegetables and even pens. The work is also a masterclass in etching, showing Hockney’s ability to masterfully combine colours in this medium and to create effects of light and shadow, surface and depth, which feels a million miles away form his earliest etchings or series such as A Rake’s Progress, which, while striking in their compositions, are more uniform in effect.