The Haunted Castle
Signed Print

Before embarking on his year-long project of illustrating Six Fairy Tales From The Brothers Grimm, David Hockney took a trip down the Rhine as research. Here he encountered the stretches of fields and rolling hills that make their way into his prints, as well as the iconic castles of the Rhine valley. He took many photographs and made many drawings which eventually became key touchpoints for his etchings. With the present work, The Haunted Castle, we can see the characteristics of the classic German castle, with its high turret, pointed spires and narrow windows. Shaded grey against a dark background of cross hatched marks the building is filled with the foreboding suggested by the title. It sits alone on a fuzzy mound, adding to the sense of isolation in the image. The scene is taken from the story known as 'The Boy who left Home to learn Fear', where, in what is now a cliche of the horror and cartoon genre, a boy spends three nights in a haunted castle in order to win a prize – in this case the hand of the king’s daughter and all the riches in the castle – as well as learning fear. He survives with reason intact however and while he wins the princess, he still does not know true fear.