{"id":208434,"date":"2025-10-18T08:34:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-18T08:34:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/208434\/"},"modified":"2025-10-18T08:34:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-18T08:34:07","slug":"david-hockneys-ipad-drawings-smash-high-estimate-at-sothebys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/208434\/","title":{"rendered":"David Hockney’s iPad Drawings Smash High Estimate at Sotheby’s"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tA group of 17 iPad drawings by David Hockney<\/a>, titled \u201cThe Arrival of Spring,\u201d hit the auction block at Sotheby\u2019s London during a dedicated day sale<\/a> on Friday, selling for a combined \u00a36.2 million ($8.3 million). (All quoted prices include fees.) The total was more than double their high estimate, and the record price paid for a print by the artist was broken three times, ultimately reaching a high of \u00a3762,000 ($1 million) for The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate, East Yorkshire in 2011 \u2013 19 February (2011). The previous record was \u00a3504,000 ($693,069).<\/p>\n

\n\tThe series represented the largest group of Hockney iPad drawings ever to come to market. Fifteen of the 17 works achieved record prices for the subject across both editions (the other edition of the series is printed in a larger format).<\/p>\n

\t\tRelated Articles<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"A<\/p>\n

\n\tSotheby\u2019s said that 40 percent of the drawings sold to American collectors, while 65 percent were bought online.<\/p>\n

\u201cHockney\u2019s iPad drawings are both impactful and uplifting,\u201d Yessica Marks, head of prints for Sotheby\u2019s Europe, told ARTnews. \u201cTonight\u2019s white-glove results confirmed just how much Hockney\u2019s work commands attention from collectors globally, standing as both a benchmark of artistic ingenuity and a testament to his enduring market appeal.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tShe added that the sale \u201cbrought a spark to Frieze Week.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe spirited bidding and strong global participation all underscore the immense appreciation that exists for Hockney\u2014and for the fearless experimentation that makes him the genius he is,\u201d Marks said.<\/p>\n

Hockney, 88, began the series in 2011, returning daily to a different location in Woldgate that spring. Sotheby\u2019s said he had originally planned to paint en plein air but didn\u2019t fancy standing in the cold British winter for long stretches. Raised in Bradford, Hockney spent many of his school holidays in East Yorkshire and turned instead to his iPad for the project. He later described the discovery of his digital medium as \u201ca wonderful spring.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHockney made 94 drawings that season, eventually narrowing them down to 51, of which the 17 just sold are among the finest examples, according to the auction house. The full series was unveiled as part of his 2012 retrospective at London\u2019s Royal Academy of Arts.<\/p>\n

The result brings the running total for modern and contemporary art sold by Sotheby\u2019s London over the past six months to \u00a3240 million ($322 million). The house took \u00a347.1 million ($63.3 million) of that figure from its contemporary art evening sale on Thursday in the British capital, largely thanks to Francis Bacon\u2019s Portrait of a Dwarf (1975), which hammered above its \u00a39 million (12 million) high estimate, landing at \u00a313.1 million ($17.6 million).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A group of 17 iPad drawings by David Hockney, titled \u201cThe Arrival of Spring,\u201d hit the auction block…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":208435,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[6225,6485,6486,53204,1120,96,2931,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-208434","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-david-hockney","12":"tag-design","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-sothebys","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom","17":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208434"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208434\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/208435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}