David Hockney, Dr. Eugene Lambe, Lucca, 1973

1973

Medium

coloured pencils on paper

Dimensions

8 × 14 cm

Status

In Gallery Collection

Collect24 Art ID

C24-153550

After I left California, I decided to go to Paris; I thought, I’ll give up England for a while, California was the place I always used to run to, but I thought, I don’t really want to go back there again, I’ll go to Paris; I’ve always liked Paris. I lived in the Hotel de Nice in the rue des Beaux-Arts at first, and I started doing some etchings in Crommelynck’s studio. That summer I went to Lucca with Henry Geldzahler and came back to England for a while. There I moved to Paris to paint.’ 1 So Hockney briefly recalls the summer of 1973 during which he and Geldzahler rented a villa in Lucca. Many of their friends including Mo McDermott, Eugene Lambe and John Kasmin, Hockney’s dealer, visited them there and, as a result, there are two known drawings of Lambe which were produced on this holiday. (Fig.1) Not a great deal is known about Lambe however, Kasmin remembers, ‘Dr. Lambe accompanied me on a journey from the Dordogne to Mario Amaya’s villa near Lucca and was at once requisitioned as a model by David who was working there that summer. Avoiding the practice of law Eugene chose to serve his friends as decorator and carpenter when not entirely dedicated to bibulous Buddhism.’ 2 Hockney is without a doubt one of the great draughtsmen of our age. The present work is a wonderful example of his mastery of coloured pencil which illustrates perfectly his ability to capture the essence of a scene so succinctly. In this work Hockney articulates expertly the light as it streams onto Lambe’s face, casting strong shadows of dark colour over his beard and shirt and bathing his skin in a sheen of blue. Typically, like many of Hockney’s drawings of his friends and acquaintances, there is an acute sense of intimacy in this work as if a quiet, contemplative moment on both the part of the artist and the sitter is being recorded on paper for posterity.