David's Pool at Night by Howard Hodgkin - softground etching and aquatint, signed edition of 100

This is really wonderful.  

Hodgkin's large scale black and white etching depicts an abstracted pool, at David Hockney’s home in Los Angeles. Howard Hodgkin’s circle of friends included numerous British artists such as David Hockney and Patrick Caulfield. Hodgkin created this work among others after a visit to Mr Hockney in Los Angeles.

David's Pool at Night is a softground etching and aquatint (from one plate) with hand colouring in ink (black) on white Hahnemühle mould made paper. It is hand-signed by the artist, lower left,  in pencil. The edition was of 100. We have number 100. 

Most Hodgkin works are abstract, but usually contain observational gestures: a room viewed from above becomes a grouping of soft shapes. Here, a palm tree is simplified into a curved chevron blended like charcoal, and the pool, filled with hazy scribbles, is neatly crenelated by saturated squares of pigment. Staccato daubs of ink recall a lawn, augmented by sweeping drybrush that frames the composition in pale grey.

David’s Pool at Night evinces the increase in emotional content and intensity in Hodgkin’s work after the late 1970s. His marks are more fluid and lush due to an increased looseness of handling. These later works show a richness and a surface texture previously lacking – mainly due to the application of gouache or watercolour by hand but also to the more tonal techniques of aquatint and soft-ground etching with chalk-like lines.

An impression of this print is in the collections of Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago; Manchester City Art Galleries, Manchester.

Approximate dimensions: 63.5 × 78.7 cm