12/06/2026
We are deeply saddened to learn of the death of David Hockney and our thoughts are with his family.
The National Gallery has been privileged to present Hockney’s work across several decades. Most recently, in 2024, his paintings were shown alongside Piero della Francesca’s ‘The Baptism of Christ’ a work he admired deeply throughout his life. His longstanding affection for the Gallery was evident as early as 1979, when he wrote to then Director Sir Michael Levey: “I must tell you that I love the collection of the National Gallery.”
Hockney’s relationship with the Gallery was both personal and generative. The collection served as a continual source of inspiration, reflected most memorably in the groundbreaking 'Artist’s Eye' series. Invited by Michael Levey in 1981, Hockney curated an exhibition exploring the power of images—whether encountered in reproduction or in their original form—and the pleasures of looking. At its centre was his painting ‘Looking at Pictures on a Screen’ (1977), depicting his friend Henry Geldzahler studying reproductions of works by Vermeer, Van Gogh, Degas, and Piero della Francesca.
In 2000, as part of the Millennium exhibition 'Encounters: New Art from Old', Hockney was invited to create new work in dialogue with the Gallery’s collection. He produced a series of twelve portraits of Gallery warders using a camera obscura, drawing on his recent engagement with the work of Ingres, whom he believed had used optical devices such as the camera lucida. This project marked a significant moment in Hockney’s exploration of the relationship between art and technology, which he would later pursue in depth in his influential and controversial book 'Secret Knowledge'.
Across his career, Hockney returned again and again to fundamental questions about how we see, how images are made, and how art connects people across time. The National Gallery honours his extraordinary legacy, his restless curiosity, and his profound contribution to the history of art.