In characteristic Hockney style, the foreground is simplified and flattened with a view of tree-clad hills in the background. The painting is set in southern France, near Saint-Tropez. It depicts a male figure in white trunks swimming breaststroke underwater, and the painter Peter Schlesinger, Hockney's former lover and muse, fully clothed and standing at the edge of the pool looking down at the swimmer. ![]() This work brings together two of Hockney's themes from his paintings of the late 1960s and early 1970s: the swimming pool, and the double portrait. He painted a series of double portraits from 1968 to 1977, including American Collectors (Fred and Marcia Weisman) (1968, Art Institute of Chicago), and Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy (1971, Tate Gallery). Hockney painted the first of his pool paintings, California Art Collector in 1964, and the swimming pool became a recurring theme in his paintings, such as Peter Getting Out of Nick's Pool (1966, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool) and most notably A Bigger Splash (1967, Tate Gallery). "I instinctively knew I was going to like it," Hockney said, "and as I flew over San Bernardino and saw the swimming pools and the houses and everything and the sun, I was more thrilled than I have ever been in arriving in any city." As a gay man, he was also a fan of the beefcake magazine Physique Pictorial, which was published in Los Angeles. The United States fascinated him, and Los Angeles in particular, partly because of the influence of Hollywood cinema but also because of the modernist building Case Study House #21. Hockney visited California for the first time in January 1964 after a successful first solo exhibition at the John Kasmin gallery. In November 2018, it sold for US$90.3 million, at that time the highest price ever paid at auction for a painting by a living artist. It measures 7 ft × 10 ft (2.1 m × 3.0 m), and depicts two figures: one swimming underwater and one clothed male figure looking down at the swimmer. Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) is a large acrylic-on-canvas pop art painting by British artist David Hockney, completed in May 1972. ![]() Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)
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