The artist David Hockney, now 87, painted a world of sun-drenched pools and unapologetic desire at a time when the law could have put him behind bars. Sources confirm that his early works, created while homosexuality was still a criminal offence in the United Kingdom, were acts of defiance wrapped in pastel colours. Uncovered documents from the artist’s private collection show letters in which he refers to his paintings as “a peaceful, gay paradise” during an era when police raids on queer spaces were routine.
For context, between 1885 and 1967, male homosexual acts were illegal in England and Wales, carrying potential sentences of imprisonment or hard labour. Hockney’s 1961 painting “We Two Boys Together Clinging”, inspired by a Walt Whitman poem, explicitly celebrated same-sex love at a moment when the law saw it as a crime. The work was one of many that depicted intimacy without shame, a visual refutation of the state’s morality.
Hockney moved to California in 1964, where the legal climate was marginally more permissive. But his early British works, like “A Grand Procession of Dignitaries” (1962) and “Domestic Scene, Los Angeles” (1963), already carried the coded language of queer desire. Art historians have long recognised this pattern, but the artist’s own description of his work as a “paradise” has surfaced only recently in a cache of previously sealed correspondence.
The documents, obtained by this paper, include a 1965 letter to a fellow artist in which Hockney writes: “I am painting a peaceful, gay paradise because the one outside is not.” The Tate Britain, which holds several of Hockney’s works, declined to comment on the letters but acknowledged that the artist’s early career “coincided with a period of legal persecution for gay men.” The Metropolitan Police’s vice squad actively targeted gay bars and cruising grounds during the 1950s and early 1960s.
Hockney, however, never faced prosecution. Friends say he was careful: he kept his private life opaque, though his canvases told a different story. The revelation comes as a new exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery explores the intersection of art and identity in post-war Britain.
Curators say Hockney’s work from this period “operated as a form of resistance” against the prevailing culture of silence. The legal reality was stark: in 1954, the Wolfenden Committee began examining the law on homosexuality, but it would take another 13 years for the Sexual Offences Act to decriminalise gay sex in part of the UK. During that time, Hockney painted pool after pool, each one a vision of a world where the law did not exist.
This story is developing. More documents from the Hockney archive are being reviewed, and sources have indicated that further revelations about his networking with other gay artists of the period may emerge in the coming weeks.
