A David Hockney landscape painting is expected to break records for the much-loved artist at auction.
Pacific Coast Highway And Santa Monica, inspired by Hockney’s daily drive to his studio, is estimated to fetch up to 30 million dollars (£22 million) when it goes under-the-hammer for the first time.
The large-scale oil painting, dating from 1990 and depicting mountain peaks, rolling hills, roads and calm bays, is one of the highlights of Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Evening sale in New York.
The current record for a Hockney work dates from 2016, with Woldgate Woods, an autumnal scene in East Yorkshire, which sold for 11.7 million dollars (£9.4 million at the time).
Pacific Coast Highway And Santa Monica depicts a drive that the artist took with friends daily but was painted from memory.
It was featured in the recent Tate Britain retrospective of the Bradford-born painter and printmaker.
The 10ft wide canvas “encapsulates Los Angeles’s bright sunlight and bold colours, the very characteristics that drew Hockney away from the grey skies of London,” Sotheby’s said.
It was painted as Hockney’s peers proclaimed the death of painting and instead turned to photography and conceptual art.
Hockney’s autobiography That’s The Way I See It features the work on the back cover.
The Contemporary Art Evening Auction takes place at Sotheby’s in New York on May 16.
