The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (224 page)

(1638–1709).
Dutch landscape painter. He worked in his native Amsterdam, where he was the friend and only documented pupil of Jacob van
Ruisdael
. Some of his pictures are very like Ruisdael's, but his range was more limited and he lacked the latter's power to capture the majesty of nature. He painted a narrow range of favourite subjects—particularly water-mills and trees around a pool—over and over again. In 1668 he became a wine gauger with the Amsterdam customs and excise, and thereafter seems to have painted only in his spare time. However, his most famous work,
The Avenue at Middelharnis
(NG, London), dates from 1689. Hobbema has long been a popular artist in England (his influence is clear in
Gainsborough's
early landscapes) and he is outstandingly well represented in English collections.

 
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(1937– ).
British painter, draughtsman, printmaker, photographer, and designer, active mainly in the USA. After a brilliant prize-winning career as a student at the
Royal College of Art
, Hockney had achieved considerable success by the time he was in his mid-twenties, and he has since consolidated his position as by far the best-known and most critically acclaimed British artist of his generation. His phenomenal success has been based not only on the flair and versatility of his work, but also on his colourful personality, which has made him a recognizable figure even to people not particularly interested in art. In 1961 he emerged as one of the leaders of British
Pop art
at the
Young Contemporaries
exhibition. Hockney himself disliked the label ‘Pop’, but his work of this time makes many references to popular culture (notably in the use of graffiti-like lettering) and is often jokey in mood. His first retrospective exhibition came as early as 1970, at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London (it subsequently toured to Hanover, Rotterdam, and Belgrade). By this time he was painting in a weightier, more traditionally representational manner, in which he did a series of large double-portraits of friends, including the well-known
Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy
(Tate Gallery, London, 1970–1). These portraits are notable for their airy feeling of space and light and the subtle flattening and simplification of forms, as well as for the sense of stylish living they capture. Hockney often paints the people and places he knows best (his art is frequently autobiographical) and has memorably celebrated his romance with Los Angeles (he first visited the city in 1963 and settled there permanently in 1976), particularly in his many paintings featuring swimming pools (
A Bigger Splash
, Tate Gallery, London, 1967). In these works he skilfully exploited the qualities of the new
acrylic
paint. Hockney has also been outstanding as a graphic artist. His work in this field includes etched illustrations to Cavafy's
Poems
(1967) and
Six Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm
(1969), as well as many individual prints, often on homoerotic themes. In the 1970s he came to the fore as a stage designer, notably with his set and costume designs for Stravinsky's
The Rake's Progress
and Mozart's
The Magic Flute
, produced at Glyndebourne in 1975 and 1978 respectively. The broader style demanded by stage design has been reflected in his subsequent easel paintings. In the 1980s he experimented a good deal with photography, producing, for example, photographic collages and—since 1986—prints created on a photocopier. Hockney is a perceptive commentator on art and has published two substantial books on his own work:
David Hockney by David Hockney
(1976) and
That's the Way I See It
(1993).

 
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(1744–97).
English landscape painter and engraver. He was the pupil and assistant of Richard
Wilson
c.
1758–65 and became a skilful imitator of his style. His work took on a more personal character when he travelled as draughtsman with Captain Cook in 1772–5, and his finest paintings are those based on drawings he made of such exotic Pacific islands as Tahiti and Easter Island (examples are in the National Maritime Museum, London). In 1779–84 he was in India and in 1790 he visited the Continent, going as far as Russia. He did pictures for
Boydell's
Shakespeare Gallery and also some allegorical subjects, but in 1795 he abandoned painting and opened a bank in Dartmouth. It failed shortly before he died.

 
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(1932– ).
British painter and printmaker, regarded as one of the outstanding colourists in contemporary art. His paintings, which are usually fairly small, sometimes look completely abstract, but in fact he bases his work on specific events, usually an encounter between people. He has travelled widely, making several visits to India, and his preference for flat colours and decorative borders reflects his admiration for Indian
miniatures
. A well-known figure in the art world, he has been a Trustee of the Tate Gallery and the National Gallery, and in 1985 he was awarded the
Turner Prize
. His work is well represented in the Tate Gallery.

 
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(1869–1947).
New Zealand painter, active mainly in England, where she settled in 1913 after some time alternating between the two hemispheres. She was the daughter of
William Matthew Hodgkins
(1833–98), an amateur painter who had emigrated from England in 1859 and took a lead in the artistic life of Dunedin. Her father taught her watercolour painting, but she did not begin to paint in oils until 1915. Until that time her work had been conventional, but she gradually developed a more individual style, echoing
Matisse
and
Dufy
(she spent a good deal of time in France), in its use of vibrant colour. She mainly painted landscapes and still lifes. Her later paintings approach abstraction in a manner akin to
Hitchens's
work.