David Hockney
People:
David
Hockney
And Bradford
Salts Mill, Saltaire, West Yorkshire, UK
site of the 1853 Gallery
and
the David Hockney Stage Designs exhibition
Salts Mill Site
An Explanation
Index
David Hockney in Bradford
David Hockney and the 1853 Gallery
How to find the exhibition
Hockney links
Page links
Hockney Biography from Gallery
OnLine a commercial site selling
Hockney works
Another detailed biography
David Hockney in Bradford
David Hockney was born in Bradford on 9th July 1937 to Kenneth and Laura Hockney. In all he had three brothers and one sister. His eldest brother Paul Hockney was to serve as Lord Mayor of Bradford in the mid-1970s.
His father worked as a clerk in a city centre Dry-salters, Grocers and Wholesalers, although he later became an accountant. The family lived a typical large Bradford terraced house at 61 Steadman Terrace , Leeds Road.
Steadman Terrace
The Hockney family home was the second
from the right (with a white door).
It was here that David Hockney spent the first four years of his life except for a period of four months when the family was evacuated to Nelson, Lancashire at the beginning of the Second World War
View down Steadman Terrace
towards Leeds Road and then across the valley of the
East Brook and the site of Bowling Iron Works towards
the distant spire of StJohn's church, East Bowling founded
by the '10 hour parson'George Bull.
In 1941 the family moved to 18 Hutton Terrace, Eccleshill. David Hockney's first school was Wellington Primary at Undercliffe - (now demolished).
Eccleshill is also situated on a steep slope but this time with views out of Bradford towards the hills separating Airedale from Wharfedale.
Hutton Terrace
The Hockney family home was the second from the left
of the larger terrace ( again with a white door).
In 1948 David Hockney went to Bradford Grammar School in Keighley Rd opposite the statue of Sir Titus Salt in Lister Park
It was also in that year that Kenneth Hockney took his son to see Puccini's La Boheme at the Alhambra Theatre in Bradford's Morley St. it was the first opera the future stage designer had ever seen.
Kenneth Hockney was an activist in
the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the
artist panted banners for that organisation. (These were later
painted over by another hand with other slogans for other campaigns)
David Hockney began his formal art education at Bradford
School of Art (1953-1957)in Great Horton Rd.
London was as far away as New York to Bradford
people in 1937. To some people it still is.
David Hockney interview with Jim Greenhalf, 2000
|
Hockney found that the education given at Bradford Art School was limited, based, as it was,on the work of the Euston Rd painterssuch as Coldstream and Pasmore
. This is not the place to discuss the development of his work after he left Bradford suffice it to say that in rejecting the methods of the earlier English painters ("In London I was put off by the ghost of
Sickert and couldn't see it properly" - interview 1973) and learning from the achievements of the newest international schools he rejected the programmes of the latter and found his own way rejecting non figurative art along with figurative In an introduction to an
exhibition catalogue of this time he pointed out that he was
interested in both the human drama and technical innovation
The former Bradford School of Art
now the Grove Library of
Bradford and Ilkley Community College
On leaving the Bradford school he was accepted for The Royal College of Art in London. But there was one last delay which kept him in the town of his birth As a registered Coscientious objector he was allowed to do his National service as a Hospital porter at St Luke's Hospital in Little Horton Lane.
St Luke's Hospital, Little Horton Lane.
This central block, built by Lockwood and Mawson
the architects of Saltaire was the Bradford Workhouse.
Since David Hockney worked here the original service
block has been demolished and replaced by this
garden which gives a better, albeit misleading, view of the building.
Index
David Hockney has always been a
controversial artist that he is also genuinely popular is a
unique achievement. Critics continue to debate whether he is a
great artist whether his work leaves out illness, poverty, war,
age and death, inequalities of power or the inequality of
experience which the market forces on us. Yet such a debate is
futile until, in the fullness of time, his whole output can be assessed. For an
artist this is when the reaction against an existing style has
run its course - say fifty years after their death ( although
dealers may try to reduce that to 4½ ). Since Hockney is only 63
we will have to get by without the judgement of posterity for a
while yet.
Instead we should concentrate on what he has
produced - the celebrations of looking at figures or landscapes
be they a hotel or a desert. Central to
Hockney's work has been this the process of looking and what for
an artist is the next step - the finding of a method of
transcribing and transforming what one sees into a design that
worksand
conveys something chosen from the original experience. All artists do this in one way or
another but Hockney has made it the meaning of his art He is a visual explorer who invites/compels us
to follow him in his explorations
Consider the recent landscapes based on the Yorkshire
wolds. First the picture of Sledmere. This village, on the B1251
from Bridlington - where the artist has a studio - to
Fridaythorpe on the York Rd, is extraordinary enough in its own right. Drivers pass
between a collection of monuments - a war memorial with curious
bas-reliefs, a cupola held up by pillars, a pseudo-medieval cross
- and the large mansion. Hockney views this using techniques
which he developed for the very different landscapes of
California. Now look at the picture of a hanging wood. This is a
return to the pure English Landscape tradition but a dialectical
return which includes all that the artist has learnt on the other
side of the world.
The pictures discussed here are not available on the internet
but the Salts Mill site does have two of his recent landscapes including his large picture of the Mill.
Return to Index
David Hockney and the
1853 Gallery
The seeds of what was to become the
1853 Gallery were sown in1963
when the 13 year old Jonathan Silver contacted Hockney to ask him if he would contribute a cover design
for a Bradford Grammar School magazine.Following a meeting in the Bradford Wimpey bar, owned by
Jonathan's father Sidney Silver the artist agreed providing the future Saltaire
entrepreneur with his first taste of publicity.
Five years later in 1968
the, by now far more famous, artist met Silver
again in the latter's studio above his father's textile business
in Barry St, Bradford where he was was producing non-representational
abstracts when he wasn't washing up at the Wimpey Bar. Thus began
a friendship which lasted until Silver's death in 1997
In 1987 Silver bought the redundant Salts
mill, Saltaire and wanting it to be more than just a
former textile mill turned business centre he asked David Hockney
if he would lend a few paintings to display. Silver also borrowed
early Hockneys - very early ones which the artist's mother , Laura
Hockney, had kept. The collection did what Silver wanted
- it brought publicity and people to the Mill and he added to the
success by buying and borrowing more works until there were
several hundred displayed in a curious environment of succulent
plants, chairs famous (der stijl) or obscure( the Saltaire barber's chair from what is
now Helen Kemp's shop and was originally Abraham Holroyd's
bookshop), Burmantofts ware and pieces
of junked machinery from the mill.
Index
How to get to the exhibition
To get to Saltaire see the travel page on this site.
The Mill Car Park is approached from Salts Mill Rd off Otley Rd Shipley
By public transport you would approach from the Victoria Rd end - which is closer to the 1853 Gallery entrance and is also near the various shops in Saltaire Village.
The exhibition of stage designs is on the third floor of the mill.
if you are standing on the railway bridge descend the steps or go round by the front of the Mill Offices now the headquarters of Pace .
If you have parked in the Mill Car Park follow the South front of the mill ( alongside the Railway) until you reach the Victoria Rd bridge then go to your right where you find yourself at the bottom of the steps.
On entering the Mill Yard take the second door on the right - the first is the security office - and climb the stairs.
On your left is the 1853 Gallery with the original Hockney exhibition and the Bookshop.
the next floor is rented by Pace and the one above that contains shops and Salt's Diner.
the Stage exhibition is on the next floor up.
Index
Hockney links
Mostly with Commercial Galleries selling Hockney
works
portrait
David Hockney site with interview
Gallery OnLine
including image of "Photography is dead long live painting"
print based on get-well card sent to Jonathan Silver during his first cancer treatment
David Hockneypictures from the Artchive
Hockney images,exhibitions dealers
Webmuseum
Hockney profile from the BBC
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An Explanation
If you have used this site before you will have noticed a tendency to fly off at tangents this is deliberate and is an attempt to show shows links between the main subject of the pages - Saltaire - and other aspects of Bradford History, Yorkshire history, national and international history, tourism, travel or whatever .
This page is not art criticism or art history or a complete biography of David Hockney it is an attempt to present one aspect of Hockney's early life and to make available facts and associations which others may have missed. It is not, of course implied that because Hockney went to the same school as David Hartley, C.J.Cutcliffe-Hyne and Dennis Healy that a study of the philosophy of association, the adventures of Captain Kettle and the development of the UKLabour Party is necessary to understand A Bigger Splash or the design for die Zauberflöte although I would not go so far as to deny the possibility....
The sources used are an article by Jim Greenhalf celebrating the award of Freedom of the City of Bradford to Hockney published in the Telegraph and Argus, Wednesday 21st June 2000 and the same author's Salt and Silver a story of hope, the Dictionary of National Biography and W.Claridge Origin and History of Bradford Grammar school from its foundation to Christmas, 1882 Bradford 1882. For Hockney Marco Livingstone David Hockney, London, Thames and Hudson, 1981 since revised is essential.
Two of the biographical notes in the section on Bradford Grammar School draw on the recently published R.Kandt (in collaboration with the late G.J.Mellor)City of Bradford Cinema Heritage Trail Bradford City Centre Management, nd
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Bradford School of Art
Bradford School of Art stands on Great Horton Rd on the site of a house known as Mannville the home from the 1790s of Thomas Mann ,a celebrated manufacturer of prostheses, and then of his sons. The most famous client of this family firm was the Marquess of Anglesey, who as Lord Uxbridge had had the celebrated exchange with Wellington upon the field of Waterloo:
Uxbridge (after close contact with a piece of round shot fired in the last volley of the French artillery): My God,sir,I have lost my leg!
Duke (after inspecting his ADC): My God, sir, you have!
Opposite the former school stands the original building of Bradford Technical College (1882) where Nobel laureate Sir Edward Appleton first studied and where Dr Eurich, father of the artist Richard Eurich, researched woolsorters' disease
(pulmonary anthrax)
.
The street had been transformed from the suburban retreat of succesful manufacturers - Richard Fawcett father of the Worsted Trade had lived further down the hill on the site later occupied by the now demolished Alexandra Hotel - into what was intended as a resource for training the next generation of technical workers in the textile and later engineering industries. This trend continued in the middle of the last century when Bradford College of Advanced Technology (now the University of Bradford was built a little further up the hill.
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Bradford Grammar School
The first record of the the Grammar School at Bradford dates from 1553 when a law-suit mentioned buildings and land which "anciently belonged to the living and sustenation of a schoolmaster teaching grammar within the town of Bradford"; at about the same time an inquisiton taken at Elland in Calderdale mentioned the same property and its use commenting that it "had been so employed time whereof the memory of man was not to the contrary".
All this suggests that the grammar school is of very ancient origin indeed.
Following the Restoration when ideological conformity was being enforced as well as it could in a traditionally Puritan town the School was refounded being granted a Charter in 1663 naming it The Free Grammar School of King Charles the Second at Bradford, among the provisions were that the Vicar should always be one of the thirteen local men who served as governors and that governors, master and even the usher should swear before a Justice of the Peace not only to be careful for the good of the school but also the oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy
Originally the School stood below the Parish church ( now Bradford Cathedral) roughly on the site of the old General Post Office now St Peter's House home of Lifeforce - The National Millenium Faith Experience.
In 1818 a new school building was begun at the top o'town. Opened in 1820 and rebuilt on a much larger scalein 1873 it became the place where a number of remarkable Bradfordians were educated up until the period of the Second World War.
After the war the school moved to the Clock House Estate, Manningham and it was in this building, illustrated above that David Hockney was educated as was Jonathan Silver,founder of the 1853 Gallery, Saltaire, and Alan South, for many years Silver's assistant and now a Saltaire Bookdealer
other famous old boys of Bradford Grammar School include:
David Clarkson (1622 - 1686) Puritan divine and contraversialist. In the siege of Bradford he tried to escape with Thomas Fairfax when the latter succesfully took his troops out of the doomed town. Clarkson failed but was led to safety by Joseph Lister (qv)
Joseph Lister (1627 - 1709) whose autobiography includes an account of the Civil War siege of Bradford. The father of Accepted Lister minister at Kipping Chapel, Thornton. Both are buried in the graveyard at the Old Bell Chapel, Thornton where Patrick Brontë was curate during the years when his famous children were born.
Lister's autobiography was first published in 1842 and, in 1860,republished in a cheap edition by Saltaire bookseller Abraham Holroyd.
John Sharp (1645 -1714), Archbishop of York ( from 1691) had refused to read the Declaration of Indulgence; commissioner for the Union with Scotland. His birthplace at the bottom of Ivegate,Bradford had been Fairfax's HQ during the siege of Bradford
Abraham Sharp (1651 - 1742) mathemetician, geometer, collaborator with John Flamsteed and eccentric. Lived at Little Horton Hall.
Dr Richard Richardson the Elder (1663 - 1741) Lord of the manor of North Bierley; friend of Sir Hans Sloane; discoverer of the Roman Iron Workings at Bierley; cultivator of the first Cedar of Lebanon to be grown in England (c1705 - the stump may still be seen near the former bus terminus at Bierley) and builder of the second greenhouse to be erected in in the country.
The remains of his landscape garden may still be seen at Bierley woods with grotto, cascades etc.
His son Dr Richard Richardson the younger(1708 - 1781), who built Bierley Church ,was succeeded to the Lordship by book collector Frances Richardson Currer of Eshton Hall near Gargrave(On her death her library, partly inherited from the Richardsons, consisted of 15,000 -20,000 volumes. Her surname may have inspired Charlotte Brontë's pen-name Currer Bell.)
David Hartley (1705 - 1757) Philosopher. His Observations on Man (1749) contained the doctrines of Vibration and of Association - an attempt at a synthesis of science and philosophy.-
My chief design.....is..to explain,establish and apply the doctrines of vibrations and associations. The first of these is taken from hints concerning the performance of sensation and motion, which Sir Isaac Newton has given in the Principia, and in the Questions annexed to his Optics; the last , from what Mr Locke....[has] delivered concerning the influence of association over our opinions and affections.....
He influenced the young Coleridge, who named his son, Hartley Coleridge, in the philosopher's honour. Coleridge later turned decisively against the materialist element in the Observations.
Hartley's son, also David Hartley,drew up, together with Benjamin Franklin, the 1783 treaty between Britain and the American former colonies.
Frederick Delius (1862 - 1934)Composer. Probably the only Old Boy of Bradford Grammar School to have been burnt in effigy in the streets of Oslo.
William Riley (1866 - 1961) novelist, manufacturer of religious lantern slides, film pioneer and Methodist lay-preacher; witnessed (1895) the first public demonstration of the Lumière Brothers' moving pictures
Riley was once so famous that when Howard Spring, working as a journalist in Bradford, heard the writer preach in a Methodist chapel he was too diffident to introduce himself. Riley's first novel Windyridge - about a fictional village based on Hawksworth beyond Baildon - sold in vast numbers which was useful when,shortly afterwards, the First World war killed the lantern-slide trade with central Europe. In 1919, at the age of 53, Riley retired to Silverdale on Morecambe Bay where he lived for the following 42 years..
Responsible for the comment on Bradford: " the city still lies in a hole." Sunset Reflections (1957) p13. The statement is true enough if, like Riley as a child, you look down on it from Laisterdike
Sir Frank Dyson (1868-1939) astronomer: in 1919 he confirmed Einstein's 'gravitational bending of light' ( more strictly the effect of mass on space-time), studied the solar corona during eclipses ( most notably by observing the 1927 total eclipse of the sun at Giggleswick in Craven, West Riding of Yorkshire ) and was responsible for the BBC time signal.
Astronomer Royal (1919 - 1933)
It seems that his exploits were an inspiration to J.Freeman Dyson ( no relation) who was then growing up in the SE of England.
Sir William Rothenstein(1872 - 1945) Painter, friend of Max Beerbohm and Principal of the Royal College of Art(1920 - 1935)
Humbert Wolfe (1886 - 1940) poet, civil servant and, at the beginning of the Second World War, cultural commissar.
J.L.Hammond (1892 -1949) Historian and leader writer of the Manchester Guardian under C.P.Scott. Together with his wife, historian Barbara Hammond, wrote the 'Labourer series' of accounts of the Industrial Revolution.
The Hammonds were much criticised by a particular generation of later historians who wished to show that the Industrial Revolution had been of great benefit to all concerned. Of course all historians make mistakes of judgement or emphasis, reason on evidence which is later contradicted and have an agenda of one sort or another but could it be that the Hammonds came in for vilification because they chose to be the advocates of the poor whose skills became uncommercial to the advantage of the rich who, in addition, found places to put their capital which made them immeasurably richer?
C.J.Cutcliffe-Hyne writer of adventure stories particularly the Captain Kettle series (very sub-Conradian seafarer with a-moral attitude to earning his family's bread: smuggling guns to Cuba,seizing government warships in South American revolutions, being pursued by Latin American 'New Woman' type etc finally retires to be Baptist pastor in the Yorkshire Dales).
Cutcliffe-Hyne, the son of the vicar of Bierley, lived an adventurous life before he took up writing; he also financed a film studio ( the Captain Kettle Film Company at Towers Hall, Manchester Rd - demolished 1970) to bring his hero to the screen but production which began in 1914 lasted only one year during which 30 episodes were made.
Edward Johnson, compiler of the Bradford Almanac, tells me that some Kettle episodes were filmed in Bowling Park
Dennis Healy (now Lord Healy) Labour politician of undoubtedly formidable intellect. Appeared in uniform at the 1945 Labour Party Conference to call for solidarity with revolutionary movements in Europe. Atlanticist in subsequent period. First British politician to apply monetarist remedies which are usually attributed to Conservatives Enoch Powell or Sir Keith Joseph. Self proclaimed most succesful Chancellor of the Exchequer of the post-Second World War era. Never held the Great Office of State which he most desired - Foreign Secretary.
After his retirement he was on at least one occasion voted most popular politician in the country; this achievement was attributed to his general bonhommie.
Husband of biographer Edna Healy, photographer, famous for his eyebrows and for a catch-phrase originally attributed to him, satirically, by impressionist Mike Yarwood.
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Jim Greenhalf
Bradford poet and journalist.
Author of
Salt and Silver a story of hope
Bradford Arts, Museums and Libraries Service
ISBN: 0907734529 £9.95
an account of Saltaire
Jim has recently published his poetry as
The Dog's Not Laughing
Redbeck Press ISBN 0946980713
1999 £9.90
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