On July 9, the 2025 Tour de France arrives in Caen, Normandy, for an individual time trial. It’s an important day for the general classification contenders and an important day, too, for one of the most famous living artists, DAVID HOCKNEY. It’s his 88th birthday, an occasion he may choose to celebrate by watching the world’s best cyclists because he owns a house in the beautiful village of Beuvron-en-Auge, just 20 miles east of Caen.
And that’s not the only geographical connection this summer between Le Tour and Hockney. Until the end of August, the Fondation Louis Vuitton, a space-age art gallery not far from the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, is devoting its entire space to a huge retrospective of Hockney’s work. The exhibition brings together more than 400 works, across a wide range of mediums and subjects, and displays the breadth and sheer joie de vivre of Hockney’s career. The principal focus is on the last 25 years, during which the artist has been based mainly in England and France.
It is pleasing to think of Hockney sitting beside the road near Caen, celebrating his birthday with a red-and-white checkerboard picnic blanket, a hamper of cheese, bread, local sausages and a glass of cider, watching the bright colors of corporate cycling teams flash by.
While Hockney’s love affair with France dates to the 1950s, when he first saw a production of the opera La Bohème, his relationship with Normandy is more recent. In October 2018, he traveled through the region with his partner and assistant, Jean-Pierre Gonçalves de Lima, and became absorbed by the visual treats of the area: the intensely green landscape, the pretty Norman villages, the woods and backroads, all lit by expansive skies. It was, perhaps, reminiscent of the gentle landscape in East Yorkshire, an area he had been painting for many years. In Normandy, he could see that springtime would be stunning. There would be an abundance of blossom: apple, pear, cherry, blackthorn, hawthorn. And Normandy had the added attraction of rich French food. Hockney is partial to cheese, bread and local sausages.
[ Originally appeared in issue 002, printed June 2025 ]
GET THE COMPLETE STORY, BUY ISSUE 002
