Artist David Hockney has revealed he did not offer to paint the King when he visited his London home recently.
The 87-year-old previously declined a number of offers to paint the late Queen Elizabeth II, because he does not paint pictures of people he does not know.
Speaking in an interview with The Times, Hockney said of the King’s visit to his Marylebone home: “He came on Monday for about an hour. But I didn’t offer to paint him.”
Of the late Queen, he said: “It’s difficult to do the majesty she had, that’s what I found difficult. I thought, she is a genuinely majestic figure, and I just couldn’t see a way to do it.”
The Bradford-born artist said in the interview that his pictures were better if he knew the subject “really well”, and also criticised Lucian Freud’s portrait of the late Queen.
He said: “When you look at the Queen, her skin is absolutely marvellous. It’s very beautiful skin. Well, he didn’t get that at all.”
In the interview, Hockney explained that he had moved back to London from his previous home in Normandy, France, in 2023 because of “intrusion”, as “people kept coming round”.
Hockney, who began working in the early 1950s, is best known for paintings such as A Bigger Splash (1967), Portrait Of An Artist (Pool With Two Figures) (1972), and Mr And Mrs Clark And Percy (1971).
Despite not painting the late Queen, Hockney did make a stained glass window for her named The Queen’s Window, which was unveiled in Westminster Abbey in 2018 to commemorate her reign.
