David Hockney, the British painter whose vivid landscapes and portraits defined a generation of modern art, was buried in a private ceremony in East Yorkshire on Tuesday. The funeral, attended by fewer than 30 family members and close associates, was held at a small Norman church near the artist’s childhood home in Bradford. No official statement was released by the family, but a source confirmed that Hockney died peacefully at his home in Normandy on 9 November, aged 87.
The low-key nature of the service stands in marked contrast to the global cascade of tributes that followed news of his death. World leaders, museum directors and fellow artists issued statements celebrating Hockney’s six-decade career, which began with the Pop Art movement of the 1960s and culminated in monumental iPad drawings of the Yorkshire landscape. The Royal Academy of Arts, which hosted Hockney’s landmark 2012 exhibition ‘A Bigger Picture’, described him as ‘the most influential British artist of the post-war era’.
His works hang in the Tate Modern, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. A public memorial is expected to be held in London early next year.