David Hockney adored his dachshunds Stanley and Boodgie and let them run riot \u2013 so much so that after one had an accident in the LA home of the actor Dennis Hopper, the painter is said to have quipped: \u201cIt\u2019ll be dry in the morning, luv, and you can just pick it up.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Hockney did not just indulge his four-legged companions, he treated them as portrait subjects for a series of paintings, one of which is to be sold by Christie\u2019s.<\/p>\n
The piece is the first from a series of dog paintings by Hockney, who died in June<\/a>, ever to appear at auction. \u201cThis is such an exciting painting for us,\u201d said Tessa Lord, Christie\u2019s head of postwar and contemporary art. \u201cThe rarity is kind of extraordinary.\u201d<\/p>\n The painting is titled Dog Painting<\/a> 17 and shows Hockney\u2019s first dachshund, Stanley, curled up on a cushion, fast asleep. It has an estimate of \u00a31.5m-\u00a32.5m and is one of more than 40 works that Hockney painted in 1994-95 for his Dog Series.<\/p>\n Stanley, named after Stan Laurel, was picked out as a puppy by Hockney in 1987 and followed him around constantly. Boodgie, more reserved, arrived later.<\/p>\n Hockney holding one of his dachshunds in 1993. Photograph: Photo Researchers\/Getty Images<\/p>\n According to Hockney\u2019s authorised biographer Christopher Simon Sykes<\/a>, friends of the peripatetic Hockney were astonished he was getting a dog in the first place. But they soon saw how besotted he was.<\/p>\n The feeling was mutual and the noisy dachshunds soon became an essential part of his busy friend- and visitor-filled life in his Hollywood Hills home on Montcalm Avenue<\/a>.<\/p>\n Sykes in his biography writes that Hockney was not bothered about house training, with one friend, Jonathon Brown, recalling how the dogs used to defecate in his shoes.<\/p>\n On a visit by Hockney for dinner at Hopper\u2019s Frank Gehry-designed house in Venice, LA, Boodgie left a \u201cgift\u201d in the middle of the floor.<\/p>\n According to Brown, Hockney did retrospectively wag his finger, telling Boodgie \u201cno, NO!\u201d. Then, \u201cas Hopper\u2019s look of a chain-gang murderer increased in intensity, Hockney added: \u201cOah, it\u2019ll be dry in the morning, luv, and you can just pick it up.\u201d<\/p>\n Hopper<\/a>, the story goes, was left with two choices: silence or murder. \u201cHe chose silence, but he looked like murder.\u201d<\/p>\n