David Hockney’s L’Arbois, Sainte-Maxime (1968) will headline Sotheby’s contemporary evening auction in London on October 9th. The painting, which sold for £1.3 million ($2.1 million) at Sotheby’s in 2011, returns with an estimate of £7 million–£10 million ($9 million–$13 million).
The origins of L’Arbois, Sainte-Maxime trace back to 1966, when Hockney fell in love with artist Peter Schlesinger at the University of California Santa Cruz. Then, in 1968, the two artists would vacation together at film director Tony Richardson’s house near Saint-Maxime in the south of France. During this time, Hockney took photographs of the town, many of which would become the source of some of his most renowned paintings, including L’Arbois, Sainte-Maxime. The painting depicts a sun-drenched view of the town’s Hotel L’Arbois.
Hockney and Schlesinger visited the town several times until the two artists ended their relationship in 1971. Another famed Hockney painting inspired by Sainte-Maxime is Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) (1972). That work sold for $90.3 million at Christie’s New York in 2017 and set the artist’s current auction record.
“This is David Hockney at his most joyful,” said Emma Baker, head of contemporary evening sales at Sotheby’s. “Radiating with vibrant color and a heightened sense of naturalism, this exquisite painting narrates a blissful summer in the French Riviera with his friends and then-lover Peter Schlesinger. After years spent soaking up the Californian landscape, which inspired so many of his best-loved canvases, it was at this moment that he found a new muse in the South of France. Buoyed by the happiness of his relationship and setting, this exquisite painting heralds the beginning of a major phase for Hockney; one that would bring about some of the most accomplished and celebrated works of his career.”
L’Arbois, Sainte-Maxime is scheduled to return to the public view for the first time since it was sold in 2011 during preview exhibitions at Sotheby’s New York from September 21st to 26th and in London from October 3rd to 9th. It will be offered alongside works by Andy Warhol, Alexander Calder, and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye.
