Hockney honoured with special award from Queen

The honour is a special award presented to individuals for great achievement in the fields of the arts, learning, literature, science and other areas.

The Order of Merit is in the sole gift of the Sovereign and was created by King Edward VII in 1902. It is restricted to 24 members as well as additional foreign recipients.

Former Australian prime minister John Howard has also been appointed a member. Other members include playwright Sir Tom Stoppard and former House of Commons speaker Baroness Betty Boothroyd.

Hockney, the Bradford-born painter who now lives on the Yorkshire coast, has been internationally renowned since bursting onto the scene in the early 1960s as one of the leaders of British pop art.

He is understood to have formerly rejected honours bestowed upon him but has been a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour, which is conferred for recognised services of national importance.

Over the decades he has cemented his position as an important artistic figure and extended his talents to work as a photographer, draughtsman, printmaker and stage designer. Although widely known for his paintings based on California – where he used to live – and his use of the state’s bright, unremitting sunlight, Hockney has also been fascinated by his native county, which will feature heavily in a new exhibition of his work, David Hockney: A Bigger Picture, due to open at the Royal Academy of Arts in London on January 21.

This will feature about 150 mainly landscape works, including some previously unseen pieces, and is expected to generate huge interest in the sites where they were painted, such as the Wolds, Bridlington and Bradford.

The Wolds are the inspiration for many of the Bigger Picture paintings, with locations such as Garrowby Hill, Kilham, Thixendale and Woldgate Woods on display.

The coast is the subject of a series of films also to be shown for the first time, revealing Hockney’s relationship with the landscape around his Bridlington home.

The artist is working with tourism agency Welcome to Yorkshire on a Hockney trail around many of the sites. Locations so far announced include the villages of Warter, Thixendale and Sledmere as well as Salts Mills and Bradford.

Hockney’s huge Bigger Trees Near Warter, which is spread over 50 canvasses, smashed visitor records at galleries across the region when it went on show last year.