David Hockney

David Hockney is Britain's most celebrated living artist, a pop-art pioneer whose swimming pools, Yorkshire landscapes, and iPad drawings have kept him culturally unmissable for six decades.

By Alexandre Le Hégarat · datastats · Updated June 15, 2026

David Hockney: The Restless Eye Behind British Art

Born in Bradford, Yorkshire, in 1937, David Hockney is widely regarded as the greatest living British artist and one of the most influential painters of the 20th and 21st centuries. He rose to prominence in the 1960s as a key figure in the British Pop Art movement, but his work has always been too restless and personal to fit a single label, he’s been a portraitist, a landscape painter, a printmaker, a set designer, and a digital pioneer.

His most iconic images, the sun-drenched Californian swimming pools, the double portraits of friends and lovers, the lush East Yorkshire Wolds, sell at auction for tens of millions of dollars and hang in the world’s top museums. Yet Hockney has never become a museum piece himself; he famously took up iPad painting in his seventies and embraced it with the same rigour he brought to oil on canvas.

Hockney split decades of his adult life between Los Angeles and England, but in recent years he settled more firmly in Normandy, France, where he has produced large-scale landscape work that continues to generate international exhibitions and critical attention.

People search for Hockney constantly because he sits at a rare intersection: stratospheric auction records, accessible and joyful imagery, a long and openly documented personal life, and an almost punkish willingness to pick fights with the art establishment, whether over the role of optics in Old Master painting or the absurdity of the smoking ban.

He was made a Companion of Honour and has turned down a knighthood. At an age when most artists are remembered rather than making news, Hockney is still showing new work and still selling out exhibitions. That’s why the world keeps Googling him.

People also ask

Hockney has lived in Normandy, France, since around 2019, based in a farmhouse near the village of La Grande Cour. He moved there after years of dividing his time between Los Angeles and Bridlington, East Yorkshire, and has since produced a major body of work inspired by the Norman landscape.

David Hockney is British, born and raised in Bradford, Yorkshire, England. He has spent long stretches of his life in the United States (particularly Los Angeles) and France, but he holds British nationality and remains fiercely identified with his Yorkshire roots.

David Hockney was born on 9 July 1937, making him 87 years old as of mid-2025. He has been famously prolific well into his eighties, showing no signs of slowing down creatively.

Hockney's precise height is not a matter of wide public record, and no reliably sourced figure exists, so any specific number floating around online should be treated as unverified. What is universally documented is his outsized presence: the thick-framed glasses, the bleached blond hair, and the trademark tweed have made him one of the most recognisable silhouettes in contemporary art.

That title belongs to *Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)* (1972), which sold at Christie's New York in November 2018 for $90.3 million, a record for a living artist at the time. The painting depicts a boy in a pink jacket gazing down at a swimmer underwater, and its combination of emotional tension and saturated colour has made it the defining Hockney image at auction.

The most expensive painting ever sold at public auction is Leonardo da Vinci's *Salvator Mundi*, which fetched $450.3 million at Christie's New York in November 2017. The most expensive painting by any measure is often cited as Paul Cézanne's *The Card Players*, reportedly sold privately for around $250–$300 million in 2011, though private sale figures are unverified. Hockney's record of $90.3 million places him in a different league from those figures, but firmly at the top for living artists.

*Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)* (1972) is Hockney's most expensive painting, selling for $90.3 million at Christie's New York in November 2018. It shattered the previous record for a living artist and turned a work that Hockney had famously rushed to complete in 48 hours into the most valuable piece of his career.

Same answer, same painting: *Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)* at $90.3 million (Christie's, 2018). Hockney reportedly finished it in a frantic two-day sprint before the deadline for a 1972 exhibition, making the eventual price tag one of art history's great ironies.

Hockney is alive and working. In January 2023 he suffered what his studio confirmed was a minor stroke, from which he recovered. He continued to produce and exhibit new work, including large-scale shows in Europe, demonstrating that his creative output remains undiminished despite the health scare.

No. David Hockney is alive. He is 87 years old (as of 2025) and continues to create and exhibit new work. Rumours of his death have circulated online periodically, as they do with many famous elderly figures, but they are false.

Hockney was raised in a Methodist household in Bradford, but he has not publicly identified as a practising religious believer in adult life. He has spoken more often in philosophical and humanist terms about art, mortality, and joy, his paintings are arguably his most consistent statement of faith, in life and in looking.

Hockney has cited a remarkably wide range of inspirations: Pablo Picasso above all (he called him the great liberator of 20th-century art), but also Francis Bacon, Henri Matisse, and the French Fauves. The sunny flatness of California itself was a visual inspiration, as was the English landscape tradition from Constable onward. His interest in the way humans perceive space also led him deep into the study of Chinese scroll painting and Renaissance perspective.

David Hockney married his partner, John Fitzherbert, in 2021. The two wed in a small, private ceremony in Normandy. Hockney had previously been in a long-term relationship with Peter Schlesinger in the late 1960s and early 1970s, a period that produced some of his most celebrated portraits, and was also in a relationship with John Fitzherbert for many years before they married.

Hockney's husband is John Fitzherbert, whom he married in 2021 in Normandy. Fitzherbert, significantly younger than Hockney, has been his long-term companion and is often seen with him at exhibitions and public appearances.

David Hockney does not have a wife, he is gay and has been openly so since the 1960s, long before it was fashionable or safe to be so in Britain. His spouse is his husband, John Fitzherbert, whom he married in 2021.

Hockney is driven by a lifelong obsession with the act of looking, how humans see, how artists represent depth and light, and how joy can be painted without sentimentality. California's swimming pools gave him a subject that was both sensual and geometrically fascinating. In later life, the Yorkshire Wolds and then Normandy reminded him that the English and French landscape traditions were just as radical as anything in Los Angeles. The iPad gave him a tool to draw constantly, anywhere, and that restless curiosity is the through-line.

The major Hockney exhibition at the Musée de Grenoble ran in 2024, and his work has been on show at various Parisian venues. As of 2025, a significant exhibition of his Normandy work has been shown in France, but specific 2025 Paris dates should be verified directly with venues such as the Centre Pompidou or the Fondation Louis Vuitton, as schedules shift. Always check the venue's official website for the most current information.

Hockney exhibitions rotate globally, major retrospectives have recently appeared in London (Tate Britain), Paris, and across Europe. In 2025, his work continues to circulate internationally. For live, accurate exhibition listings, the best source is his official studio website or major museum listings.

Paris venues that have hosted Hockney's work include the Centre Pompidou and the Fondation Louis Vuitton. His Normandy landscape paintings have been particularly associated with French shows given that he lives and works there. Check those institutions' official websites for the most current and accurate exhibition schedules.

In 2025, Hockney's work is being shown across multiple European venues, with particular focus on institutions in France and the UK. The Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris and the Royal Academy in London have both been associated with Hockney programming in recent years. For pinpoint accuracy on 2025 dates and locations, his official studio site (davidhockney.com) and the individual museum websites are the definitive sources, exhibition schedules finalise late and change.