David Hockney\u2019s first English landscape, depicting a perfectly manicured Oxfordshire garden, is on show for the first time in three decades before being auctioned.<\/p>\n
Sotheby\u2019s said the 1965 painting, English Garden, which was completed in Boulder, Colorado, was pivotal for Hockney as well as holding an important place in wider art history.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is a seminal painting,\u201d said the Sotheby\u2019s co-head of contemporary art in London, Tom Edisson. \u201cIt really lays the foundations for everything that was to come after.\u201d<\/p>\n
The painting has gone on display at the auction house\u2019s central London galleries before its sale on 4 March, with an estimate of \u00a32.5m-\u00a33.5m.<\/p>\n
Hockney was not long out of art school when he moved to the US, and in the summer of 1965 he was invited to teach at the university in Boulder, Colorado.<\/p>\n
He found himself a lover, a 19-year-old student called Dale Chisman, and enjoyed his six weeks in Boulder but was given a studio with no windows.<\/p>\n
\u201cHere I am surrounded by these beautiful Rocky mountains,\u201d he told his biographer. \u201cI go into the studio \u2013 no window! And all I need is a couple of little windows.\u201d<\/p>\n
Looking for inspiration, he came across a photograph in American Vogue by Horst P Horst of a sculptured topiary garden at Haseley Court, Oxfordshire, home to the designer and tastemaker Nancy Lancaster.<\/p>\n
Edisson said: \u201cYou have a pang of nostalgia, maybe a bit of homesickness, looking back at England\u2019s green and pleasant lands \u2026 I think that spurred him on to paint home.\u201d<\/p>\n
English Garden is Hockney\u2019s first fully realised English landscape and was painted at a time when abstract art, not figurative, was the dominant force.<\/p>\n
Edisson said the work was particularly exciting \u201cbecause it cements so much of what we know Hockney\u2019s practice is about and what we\u2019ve all come to love about him as an artist \u2026 it was a real turning point.\u201d<\/p>\n
Outside his California pool paintings, Bradford-born Hockney\u2019s more recent paintings of the East Yorkshire landscape are among the most recognised and best loved paintings of his career<\/a>, said Edisson.<\/p>\n The direct link can be seen in English Garden, he added.<\/p>\n The painting was exhibited at Kasmin Gallery in London in the year it was painted and last went on display in a public gallery in a 1970 show at the Whitechapel Gallery in London. It has been in private hands since, appearing at auction in 1997.<\/p>\n Hockney, now 88, remains busy, with an exhibition of new works opening at the Serpentine Gallery in London in March.<\/p>\n