To offer you even more information about the museum and Vincent van Gogh, and serve you better, we use cookies.
By clicking ‘Accept’, you are giving us permission to use these cookies. Cookies help us to ensure that the website works properly. We also analyse how the website is used, so that we can make any necessary improvements. Advertisements can also be displayed tailored to your interests. And finally, we use cookies to display forms, Google Maps and other embedded content.
Find out more about our cookies.
Two Painters, One Love
Two painters, one love: Nature. David Hockney (1937) may live more than a century later than Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890), however their vision of landscape is often similar. But what exactly does this nature mean to them? And how did Van Gogh’s landscapes inspire Hockney?
When [nature] is at its height it looks as though champagne has been poured over the bushes and it is all foaming up and it looks marvelous.
David Hockney, 2018
The British painter David Hockney is over 80 years old and still paints every day. Hockney is one of the most renowned artists of our time.
When Hockney lived in the countryside of Bridlington in northern England, he painted many landscapes. Hockney identifies with Van Gogh's work: both artists see the extraordinary in an unremarkable view. And both are fascinated by the seasons, which bring about continuous change in nature.
David Hockney, with the assistance of Jonathan Wilkinson, 'In the Studio, December 2017,' collection of the artist
Hockney stands in the middle of his studio on this photo. The artist himself is almost like a work of art in this 'photographic drawing,' as he calls it. He is surrounded by 3D-photographs of his paintings, which he mounted digitally in the photographed space.
For twenty-five years Hockney went without seasonal change, as he had experienced in England. All that time he lived in sunny Los Angeles.
Upon returning to his native Yorkshire (2004), it was as though he wanted to make up for that loss: time and again he ventured to a particular place to record the changing of the seasons.
With keen perception, Hockney captured the gradual changes in this particular spot in the woods in four large works of art, each consisting of six canvasses. You can almost see the landscape transform before your eyes.
Van Gogh was equally fascinated by the changing of the seasons. From Arles, at the awakening of spring in 1888, he wrote his brother:
‘… for Christ’s sake get the paint to me without delay. The season of orchards in blossom is so short, and you know these subjects are among the ones that cheer everyone up.’
David Hockney, 'May Blossom on the Roman Road', 2009, collection of the artist
With regard to spring Hockney says that it looks as though champagne has been poured over the bushes and everything seems foamy. He is just as elated as Van Gogh once was about the burgeoning of the flowering trees.
Lots of people just scan the ground in front of them so they can walk, but they don't really look at things. Van Gogh really looked.
David Hockney, 2018
In order to paint nature well, you must take the time to truly observe everything closely. ‘You have to really look,’ as Hockney says. And, Van Gogh did just that according to him. He could see what many people fail to notice and enchants us with it to this day.
David Hockney, 'Under the Trees, Bigger', 2010–2011, collection of th artist.
David Hockney can become entranced by trees with fresh green shoots, spring flowers, the clear light. If you pay attention, nothing in nature stays the same for a single moment: ‘You can’t be bored of nature, can you?’
Well, sometimes I’ll steal something from Van Gogh. I mean I do. Good artists don’t borrow, they steal.
David Hockney, 2018
A landscape full of colour contrasts and wheat stalks swaying in all directions, as though moving in the wind. Hockney closely studied these aspects of Van Gogh’s work. What did he do with his observations?
David Hockney, 'Woldgate Vista, 27 July 2005', collection of the artist
Hockney lets every single blade of grass dance. This movement is inspired by a painting such as Van Gogh’s The Harvest. The pattern of colour contrasts between all of the individual fields, hedges, and kinds of vegetation in that work recurs in Woldgate Vista, 27 July 2005.
Every painter has his own handwriting, as it were. Hockney and Van Gogh, for instance, both use characteristic strokes and dots. And, in painting a forest they choose a vantage point whereby the long lines of the bare trunks dominate.
Vincent van Gogh, 'Undergrowth with Two Figures,' 1890, Cincinnati Art Museum, bequest of Mary E. Johnston, 1967
Van Gogh was clearly fascinated by the rhythm of the bald tree trunks when he painted this forest scene with long lines. In it Hockney also recognises the way in which Van Gogh continued to be surprised by what he encountered in nature.
David Hockney, 'The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate, East Yorkshire in 2011 (twenty eleven)', Centre Pompidou, Paris, Musée national d’art moderne – Centre de création industrielle
Vibrant colours, strokes, and dots: they are all part of Van Gogh’s familiar facture, which Hockney adopted in an entirely individualistic way in his landscapes.
Love of nature, finding yourself, enjoying beauty. For the one this was automatic, for the other something perhaps discovered later. While a profound love of nature came early on for Van Gogh, Hockney needed more time to develop his appreciation of the landscape.
Vincent van Gogh, 'The Painter on the Road to Tarascon', 1888 (lost in the Second World War)
Van Gogh grew up in a village in in the province of Noord-Brabant, where fields and nature were always nearby. He ventured out of doors his entire life. No matter where he lived, he continued to seek out nature in order to paint and find some peace of mind.
David Hockney painting 'Woldgate Woods', 26, 27 & 30 July 2006
Born and raised in the northern English city of Bradford, David Hockney was decidedly not a nature lover by birth. In a 1976 interview he even said: ‘I do prefer culture to nature. I get more excited.’ However, the reverse has held true since the late 1990s. Now, he sees how the landscape continues to enthral from hour to hour.
It is almost as though energy is compressed in Van Gogh’s landscapes. Regardless of which season Van Gogh turned his hand to, it is the raw power emanating from it that continues to inspire Hockney and many others.
Sometimes I long so much to do landscape, just as one would go for a long walk to refresh oneself, and in all of nature, in trees for instance, I see expression and a soul, as it were.
Vincent van Gogh to his brother Theo, from Den Haag, 10 December 1882
