View from Miramar Hotel, Santa Monica by David Hockney, £320,000 at Chiswick Auctions.
The crayon and pencil drawing titled View from Miramar Hotel, Santa Monica measures 19 x 13in (43 x 35cm) and is signed and dated DH 1970. Its provenance now reassembled, it led the Modern British and Irish Art on June 25 with a guide of £200,000-300,000.
Hockney had first moved to Los Angeles in 1964 and has lived there intermittently ever since. Though currently residing mostly in Normandy, he still has his house and studio in the Hollywood Hills. His first series of Californian swimming pool paintings were made from 1964-67.
Detail of View from Miramar Hotel, Santa Monica by David Hockney, £320,000 at Chiswick Auctions.
Research has shown that the drawing was sold through the Kasmin Gallery, the London dealership run by John Kasmin who had first met Hockney in 1960 and begun selling his art from as early as 1963. It was later loaned to the British Art’s Council for the seminal Hockney exhibition at the Louvre in 1974.
The exhibition featured key works such as A Bigger Splash and Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures).
The drawing was recently inherited from the vendor’s father, who possibly purchased the work from the Knoedler Gallery, but in the past 15 years its importance had been completely forgotten.
The vendor contacted Chiswick Auctions with an online valuation request, including a photo of the drawing alongside other items of little value. With 25% buyer's premium added, the total priced was £400,000.
Labels to the reverse of View from Miramar Hotel, Santa Monica by David Hockney, £320,000 at Chiswick Auctions.
