David Hockney’s Exceedingly Charming ‘Splash’ Painting Could Fetch Almost $40 Million at Sotheby’s Next Month

Forty years after it was
painted, David Hockney’s painting The Splash sold for $5.4 million at Sotheby’s London in
2006, setting a new auction record for the venerable British
artist. Now, the same auction house hopes to make an even bigger
splash with the same painting.

The 1966 canvas, which depicts
the aftermath of a dive in an otherwise serene California pool,
will hit the auction block once again at Sotheby’s
contemporary art evening auction in London on February 11. It’s estimated
to fetch between $26.2 million and $39.3 million (£20 million to
£30 million)—nearly 630 percent more than it sold for just 14 years
ago. 

“Not only is this a landmark
work within David Hockney’s oeuvre, it’s an icon of Pop that
defined an era and also gave a visual identity to LA,” says Emma
Baker, the head of Sotheby’s contemporary art evening sale, in a
statement. 

Splash
follows in the wake of
numerous high-profile Hockneys at
auction. In fact, nine of the artist’s 10 highest auction sales
have come in the last two years, according to the Artnet Price
Database. They are led by another famous pool painting,
Portrait of an Artist (Pool with
Two Figures),
which sold for a
record $90.3 million in 2018 (and temporarily made
Hockney the most expensive living artist at auction). The
82-year-old’s 1969 double portrait Henry Geldzahler and Christopher
Scott fetched $49.5
million in March of last year, while his 1971 painting
Sur la Terrasse
sold for $29.5
million at Christie’s in November.

Beneath these headline figures, the Hockney market is stable, if
not frothy for anything but the best pictures. All told, 21
paintings by Hockney hit the auction block last year, according to
the database. Of these, four failed to sell; two sold below
estimate; ten sold within estimate; and five sold above
estimate.

The square 72-inch work heading
to auction next month is one of three sister Splash paintings made by Hockney in the mid-to-late
‘60s, each of which features slight compositional
differences. A Bigger Splash, the largest (95 by 96 inches) and best known
of the bunch, was done in 1967 and has been in the collection of
the Tate Modern since 1981. A Little Splash, painted in 1966, is in a private
collection.

A spokesperson for Sotheby’s did not immediately respond to an
inquiry about whether the work carried a guarantee.

“I love the idea, first of all,
of painting like Leonardo, all his studies of water, swirling
things,” Hockney said of A Bigger Splash in his 1976
book Hockney by
Hockney. “And I loved
the idea of painting this thing that lasts for two seconds; it
takes me two weeks to paint this event that lasts for two seconds.
Everyone knows a splash can’t be frozen in time, so when you see it
like that in a painting it’s even more striking than in a
photograph.”

The Splash
will go on view at Sotheby’s
locations in Hong Kong, Taipei, New York and London prior to the
sale on the 11th.

The post David Hockney’s Exceedingly Charming ‘Splash’
Painting Could Fetch Almost $40 Million at Sotheby’s Next Month
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