David Hockney through the collection: A lifelong source of inspiration

Hockney once said: ‘The National Gallery is doing a great job isn’t it?... Everything in the collection is good, every single picture is good. It’s a classic collection of paintings...’ David Hockney was perhaps the most critically acclaimed and universally popular artist of our age – producing art in almost every medium: painting, drawing, stage design, photography and printmaking, and stretching the boundaries in all of them. The technological experimentation that characterised Hockney’s 50-year career, from Polaroids to photocopiers and iPads was nonetheless inspired by the greats of art history and especially those in the National Gallery collection. Join us on a tour of the collection from the first image which inspired Hockney in his childhood home, the works which he incorporated into his own pieces and his later versions of famous work which allowed him to explore his own groundbreaking ideas on perspective. From Piero della Francesca, Uccello and Vermeer to Ingres, Degas and Van Gogh, this talk will give us a chance to reflect on and celebrate his decades-long fascination with our paintings and their frequent part in his artistic life.