Spring in Art and Literature

What do you do in lockdown if you are one of the world’s most popular and highly regarded artists?

If you are David Hockney, you draw. All day. Every single day.

And so it was that last spring, David Hockney was at his centuries-old Normandy farmhouse with his dog Ruby, surrounded by acres of fruit trees, when he thought it would be a good place to draw and paint the arrival of spring on his iPad. Years ago, Hockney painted the arrival of spring in Yorkshire, not far from where he’d grown up, and he relished the notion of drawing it again in the French countryside that inspired the Impressionists.

He was attracted to Normandy because it offered a broad range of blossoms, with apple, cherry, pear and plum trees as well as hawthorn and blackthorn.

So, in February 2020, Hockney started to draw the arrival of spring in Normandy. As the first lockdown came in France, which reported one of the highest numbers of coronavirus cases in Europe, the ever-optimistic painter sent a message of hope and released his joyous image of daffodils (pictured) entitled “Do Remember They Can’t Cancel the Spring.”

Over several months the artist rose with the sun and went out to his four acres of orchard to look for something to paint. He captured the unfolding beauty of spring and painted 116 new and optimistic works in praise of the natural world.

In April 2020 further images were released for publication for people to enjoy during the confines of lockdown. Of those, my favourite image is the tree in blossom (pictured). It positively glows with brightness and vitality, bursting with colour and life. To me it says “Spring is coming, and no doubt better days….”

The artist’s work will be the subject of an exhibition, The Arrival of Spring Normandy, 2020, at The Royal Academy of Arts in London from 23rd May to 1st August 2021.

And finally, an extract from the beautiful poem “Spring” by Christina Rossetti :-

“There is no time like Spring, When life’s alive in everything, Before new nestlings sing, Before cleft swallows speed their journey back Along the trackless track – God guides their wing, He spreads their table that they nothing lack, – Before the daisy grows a common flower Before the sun has power To scorch the world up in his noontide hour……”

Juliet Pattinson