HOCKNEY, David

Catherina Dorothea Viehman, frontispiece from Six Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm

1969

Etching and Aquatint

image: 11 1/2 x 9; Sheet: 24 1/2 x 18

The ultimate storyteller, Catherina Dorothea Viehmann, an innkeeper, contributed 40 stories to the Brothers Grimm anthology of fairytales. She was singled out in the preface to the second version of the Grimms, Childrens and Household Fairytales (1819) and her portrait served as the frontispiece. Hockney used that image of Viehmann as the source for this contemporary print when he embarked on a project to make a series of prints based on his personal responses to certain stories. His portrait of Viehmann, as in the case of the Grimms volume, acts as the frontispiece for his print portfolio and imbues her with a proud, though certainly stern, bearing.

1969

HOCKNEY, David

British, b. 1937

Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Leon O. Banks

1998.75.5