Charlotte Keenan with David Hockney artwork
COLOURS seem more vivid in California, where the canary-yellow sun beats down on aquamarine seas and turquoise swimming pools lined by the glossy rich and famous sipping scarlet cocktails.
To a 24-year-old gay painter who’d grown up in the shadow of Bradford’s dark satanic mills, it was the American dream come true.
David Hockney moved to Los Angeles in early-1964, seeking a new life and acceptance of his sexuality.
It was while teaching at art school that he met the subject of one of his best-known paintings, Peter Getting out of Nick’s Pool, which hangs in Liverpool’s Walker Art Gallery.
Peter Schlesinger was just 19 years old, but the pair became lovers.
Hockney set the portrait at the house of his agent Nick Wilder, just north of Sunset Boulevard, where the artist lived from summer 1966 to early 1967 while also renting a rundown studio in the city.
