Buckingham Palace has confirmed that King Charles III will personally lead tributes to David Hockney, the 87-year-old artist whose career has been as much about audacious brilliance as it has been about tax avoidance and dodgy dealings. Sources close to the palace reveal that the monarch’s statement will hail Hockney as a “giant of the art world” and a “symbol of British cultural supremacy”. But let’s not get carried away with the gilded language.
This is the same Hockney who fled Britain in the 1970s for California, citing tax rates and grey skies. The same man who, in 2018, sold a painting for £90 million, yet has donated barely a fraction of his fortune to the public institutions that made him. The tribute is being orchestrated by the palace’s new cultural advisory board, a group stacked with corporate donors.
Uncovered documents suggest that several members have ties to offshore accounts that would make Hockney’s tax exile look like a parking ticket. King Charles, who has positioned himself as a patron of the arts, is no stranger to scrutiny. His own charitable foundations have been linked to questionable cash flows, as I have reported extensively.
The timing is curious. Hockney’s retrospective at the National Portrait Gallery opens next week, and the palace’s endorsement is a surefire boost to ticket sales. But who benefits?
The gallery’s chairman, Sir Charles Saumarez Smith, is a former director of the Royal Academy, an institution that has faced allegations of financial mismanagement. Meanwhile, Hockney’s estate is reportedly in negotiations to transfer a chunk of his work to a private trust in Jersey. This tribute is not about art.
It’s about power. It’s about laundering the reputation of a billionaire artist through the monarchy’s seal of approval. The British public should be asking why their tax pounds are subsidising a palace PR machine that lifts up the already wealthy.
As one former palace insider told me: “This is a distraction from the real issues: the cost of living, the crumbling NHS, and the fact that the King’s own accounts are murkier than a Hockney swimming pool.” I’ll be following the money. You should too.
