In the manner of David Hockney
British, b. 1937
Portrait of a Friend on a Tablet, 2026
Acrylic on canvas
152 × 228 cm
Never painted.
Commissioned for the collection, 2026.
PAB 2026.24.3
A man in a striped shirt sits by the open terrace door with a tablet on his knee, drawing the view, while a bowl of lemons and an empty blue chair keep him company. The sea shines outside. Hockney began drawing on a phone around 2009, then on a tablet, and has not stopped since. This is a portrait of a friend doing what Hockney does, in his light.
The brief
A man in a striped shirt seated in a bright room drawing on a tablet, a bowl of lemons, a blue chair. Contemporary painting in flat bright acrylic, clean Californian sunlight, saturated turquoise, pink, lime and yellow, simplified forms with crisp edges, patterned water and foliage, a calm sense of leisure and space, flat colour with occasional wobbly hand-drawn line, slight digital-drawing smoothness. Museum photograph of the acrylic painting, bright even lighting, no frame, no text, no wall, no floor, cropped to the canvas edge.
Written to the house rules. The painter's name does not appear.
Take it home
The painting on this room's wall, at its own proportions, nothing written on it.
