The Fitzwilliam Museum acquires its first David Hockney painting

We’re delighted to announce that the Fitzwilliam Museum has acquired its first David Hockney painting, Huggate's St Mary's Church Spire, August 2005, under the Acceptance in Lieu scheme.

Painted en plein air, Hockney’s landscape is from a period of artistic reengagement with Yorkshire, where he was born and raised. It shows what fields at harvest time in the Wolds of East Riding, a scene Hockney was familiar with having worked as a seasonal farm labourer as a teenager. One of the first of Hockney’s oil landscapes, it was painted at the beginning of a seven-year period focused on producing oil works of Yorkshire landscapes.

In 2022, it was on display in Hockney’s Eye: The Art and Technology of Depiction, an exhibtion hosted by the Fitzwilliam and The Heong Gallery, Downing College Cambridge, where it was exhibited next to John Constable’s Hampstead Heath.

Both paintings are currently on display in Gallery 3 until 30 December 2022.

Huggate’s St Mary’s Church Spire, August 2005. By David Hockney. © David Hockney.

9 December 2022