David Hockney David Hockey / Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) New York, 2017
David Hockney's 5 Most Famous Paintings
reviewed by Erin Argun Last updated23 Dec 2025
David Hockney has become an icon of British art over his illustrious career, combining a range of different styles to produce his bright, colourful paintings and sculptures. The Yorkshire born artist became an emblem of British Pop Art in the 1960s before moving to California in 1964, where the sun-drenched, sexually liberated atmosphere that he encountered transformed both his style and subject matter.
More a list of favourites – there are some scandalous omissions that I know others will pick – and definitely skewed towards the books that I read at an impressionable age, but everything here has engaged, affected and influenced me and I love them all.
"A book that seems different every time I read it."
4 The Portrait of a Lady (#21)
by Henry James
5 Housekeeping (#43)
by Marilynne Robinson
"The most exquisite writing - perfect prose on every page. Absolutely heartbreaking too."
6 To the Lighthouse (#4)
by Virginia Woolf
7 Howards End (#60)
by EM Forster
"By no means a perfect novel but still stuffed full of ideas and with such warmth and curiosity and humour."
8 Sula
by Toni Morrison
9 The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (#31)
by Muriel Spark
10 The Transit of Venus (#53)
by Shirley Hazzard
"All the scale and high emotion of a great 19th century novel, but published in 1980. One of the great endings too - a puzzle that clicks into place and makes you gasp."
