The Weather Series (S.A.C. 136-141; Tokyo 127-132)

On his first visit to Japan in 1971, Hockney saw an exhibition called 'Japanese Painters in the Traditional Style' at the Municipal Gallery of Kyoto. 'There was a beautiful painting on silk called 'Osaka in the Rain,' done in 1935. The nearest thing in my cogniscance was Dufy - but it really was a lot better than that.' (Christopher Simon Sykes, Hockney: The Biography, Century, London, 2011, p. 264). The stylized depiction of weather conditions, especially rain, in Japanese art fascinated Hockney and in 1973 he began work on his own series of weather prints. In these large-scale lithographs, Hockney evokes the atmospheric effects of weather with visual ciphers and an inventive use of the medium. The wetness of rain is wonderfully expressed by watery dribbles of lithographic tusche, while brilliant sunshine pouring in through a window finds its equivalent in strips of golden yellow laid over a background of lemon yellow and blue. The lithograph Wind playfully references Hokusai's A Sudden Gust of Wind, with Hockney depicting his own weather prints being tossed about the air and Melrose Avenue street sign replacing the distant view of Mount Fuji in Hokusai's woodcut.