Back in February 2011, an entire gallery wall was given over to a giant piece of landscape art by legendary Yorkshire artist David Hockney.
Hockney, who was born in Bradford but lived in Bridlington, painted his Bigger Trees Near Warter, on 50 smaller canvasses. Pieced together, it measured 15ft by 40ft.
It took Hockney six weeks to complete. Like Monet before him, he was inspired by the landscape on his doorstep, in this case, the Yorkshire Wolds, rather than the lily ponds of Monet’s Japanese garden at his home in Giverny, north of Paris.
Hockney painted Bigger Trees Near Warter outside, not put off by the cold.
The artist attended its grand unveiling at York Art Gallery in 2011 and told reporters how the work came about.
He said he chose the subject after the trees caught his eye one day. “I drive around a lot. It was the trees themselves. I thought: ‘I can make something of that’.”
He painted it from life over six weeks, out in the cold of the East Yorkshire spring, on separate canvases, using a computer so he did not lose sight of the overall picture.
It was pretty cold at times, he admits. “But the people in the house [in the picture] kept bringing me out cups of tea.”
Hockney’s painting was originally exhibited at the Royal Academy’s summer exhibition, before the artist presented it to The Tate.
It turned out to be one of the biggest hits for York Art Gallery, attracting more than 130,000 visitors during its stay. Afterwards, it was exhibited at Hull’s Ferens Art Gallery, where some 63,000 people saw it, a then record for the east coast gallery.
Bigger Trees is just one of hundreds of paintings by Hockney of his beloved Yorkshire Wolds, many of which were created on iPad. They have been on display at numerous galleries and you can still see a wide selection of them at Salts Mill at Saltaire, near Bradford.
Hockney definitely helped put this corner of Yorkshire on the map.
One of his most popular Wolds works is Three Threes at Thixendale. Local spirits maker Julia Medforth was quick to make the connection when she realised the fruit for her sloe gin came from Hockney’s iconic landscape.
Julia, whose company makes Raisthorpe sloe gin, said the trees under which she foraged for sloes for her gin were in the exact spot depicted by Hockney.
It featured the famous landmarks of the city as seen by its residents. It was to mark the Tour de France staging its Grand Depart in York in 2014.
The original painting was reproduced on a monumental scale by the people of York.
The image was divided in 320 squares and during ten free workshops, held at the Railway Institute in Queen Street York, people from all walks of life, from two to 90 years old, came together to paint a square measuring one metre by one metre.
As reported by the Press, Claude Monet’s 1899 masterpiece The Water-Lily Pond will be going on display in York from May 10 to September 8 as part of a programme to loan some of the National Gallery’s finest paintings to regional art galleries.
