David Hockney’s Horizontal Dogs, 1995, is an etching and aquatint in colour depicting the artist’s much-loved dachshunds, Stanley and Boodgie. Printed on Arches watercolour paper in an edition of 80, the work measures 56.8 × 62.8 cm and belongs to a period in which Hockney repeatedly turned to his dogs as subjects for drawings, paintings and prints. Their elongated forms naturally lend themselves to the horizontal composition, while Hockney’s economical use of line captures the familiar poses and character of the dogs with remarkable simplicity.
Created during Hockney’s sustained exploration of Stanley and Boodgie in the 1990s, Horizontal Dogs transforms an intimate, everyday observation into a carefully considered print. The combination of etching and aquatint allowed Hockney to bring together expressive drawn lines with areas of colour and tonal variation, retaining the immediacy associated with his studies from life. Alongside works such as Small Dog, Horizontal Dogs forms part of a distinctive group of David Hockney dog prints that reveal the artist’s affection for his dachshunds while demonstrating his continued experimentation with traditional printmaking techniques.
