David Hockney, O.M., C.H., R.A. (b. 1937)

One of the sitters in the present work is Nick Wilder, Hockney’s close friend and Californian art dealer, who was an important figure on the West Coast art scene. He is the subject of one of Hockney’s most celebrated pool paintings from his first California period, Portrait of Nick Wilder, 1966. The reference to him in another well-known pool painting of that year, Peter Getting out of Nick's Pool (Liverpool Museums), also positions him at the centre of Hockney's social scene at that time.