David Hockney: The reluctant grammar school pupil who went on to be an artistic superstar

One of five siblings, in 1948 he won a scholarship to Bradford Grammar School where he was an often reluctant pupil – “he was very difficult” and “did not want to go” wrote his mother Laura – as even by his early teens he was interested in little else but becoming an artist.

Although he was academically bright, he was frustrated to find art comprised only a minor part of the school’s curriculum.

“We had just an hour and a half of art classes a week in the first year,” he recalled. “After that you went in either for classics or science or modern languages.

“You could only study art if you were in the bottom form and did a general course. So I said ‘Well, I’ll be general in form if you don’t mind’. It was quite easy to arrange, because if you did less work you were automatically put in that section.”

And so the young Hockney made an early name for himself by illustrating the school magazine and for his cartoon drawings of staff and fellow pupils, all while constantly pestering his parents to let him move to the city’s college, Bradford Regional Art School.

Although the pleas fell on deaf ears, both at home and with the city’s education authorities, his parents, though of modest means, did manage to arrange him some private lessons with a tutor from the college, where he finally enrolled in 1953.

“It was thrilling, after being at the grammar school, to be at a school where I knew they would enjoy everything they asked me to do,” he said. “I loved it all and I used to spend 12 hours a day in the art school.”

Although the college had a bias toward training students for careers as commercial artists, nevertheless tutors such as Frank Johnson, Frederick Lyle and Derek Stafford fostered Hockney’s love of painting and encouraged him to submit some of his works for the 1957 Royal Academy summer exhibition.

At the same time as his paintings were accepted for display, he graduated from college with honours. Two years later, he was accepted on a postgraduate course at the Royal College of Art, in London, and was firmly on course for the success which followed.

While he has spent the majority of his career based in California, Hockney has never forgotten his Yorkshire roots and the county’s influence on his formative years as an artist.

Between 2005 and 2013 he famously swapped the west coast of the USA for the east coast of England, setting up home in Bridlington from where he painted the landscape of the Yorkshire Wolds.

During this period he would regularly be seen sitting by East Riding roadsides, working on what have become some of his most celebrated paintings, many of which have been displayed in Salts Mill, at Saltaire, as well as Bradford’s Cartwright Hall gallery.

Timeline of David Hockney’s life

1937: Born on July 9 to Kenneth and Laura Hockney of Hutton Terrace, Bradford.

1941: Begins education at Wellington Primary School, Eccleshill.

1948: Wins scholarship to Bradford Grammar School.

1953: Enrols at Bradford Regional Art School.

1957: Exhibits paintings at Royal Academy summer exhibition.

1959: Enrols at Royal College of Art.

1962: Graduates from Royal College of Art, first paintings go on sale.

1964: Moves to Los Angeles.

1967: Paints A Bigger Splash, one of his best-known works.

1973-75: Lives and works in Paris.

1981: Exhibits at National Gallery.

1988: His first artwork to be created by fax.

1998: Begins painting Yorkshire landscapes from memory.

2005: Moves to Bridlington.

2010: Begins drawing with iPad.

2013: Returns to Los Angeles.

2018: Designs window for Westminster Abbey.

2020: Drawing from Life exhibition at National Portrait Gallery.