A vibrant depiction of a gay Eden by David Hockney has sold for an eye-watering £38 million at auction, the highest sum ever paid for a living artist’s work in Europe. The sale comes as museums, galleries and community centres across Britain host events for LGBTQ+ History Month, placing the artist’s unapologetically queer vision at the heart of a national conversation about identity, love and economics.
The painting, titled "The Splendour of the Garden", captures two male figures intertwined under a cascade of blooming wisteria. It was completed in 2021, when Hockney was 83, and shows a return to the sun-drenched optimism of his California pool series from the 1960s. But this time the paradise is explicitly homosexual: the lovers are unashamed, the light is forgiving, and the flowers are almost absurdly lush.
“This isn’t just a record price. It’s a statement,” said Eleanor Shaw, curator of modern art at the Tate. “Hockney has always painted his life, and his life is gay. For decades that was coded or marginalised. Now it’s celebrated at the highest level of the market. That’s progress, but it’s also money.”
The buyer remains anonymous, but the sale sends ripples through an art world still grappling with inequality. The £38 million could fund 38 new community centres in the North of England for a year, or pay the wages of 1,500 nurses. Yet the sum also reflects a growing appetite for queer art as an asset class, particularly among wealthy collectors who see pride flags as safe investments.
“This price tag says more about the art market than about David Hockney,” said Dr. Ravi Patel, head of economic history at the University of Manchester. “It’s a speculative bubble fuelled by tax avoidance and global capital flight. The painting is beautiful, but the transaction is cold. The real question is whether this money trickles down to support LGBTQ+ artists who aren’t white, male or 85.”
Hockney’s career has been a study in northern grit and Californian glamour. Born in Bradford in 1937, he rose through the post-war grammar school system and became a champion of queer visibility during the 1960s, when homosexuality was still illegal. His early works from that period, like "We Two Boys Together Clinging", were coded but radical. Now, in his ninth decade, he is openly painting male couples in flagrante delicto, draped in the sort of botanical abundance that would make a greenhouse blush.
The record sale coincides with a broader push to commemorate LGBTQ+ history. The National Portrait Gallery has just opened an exhibition of queer portraiture from the 18th century to the present day. Manchester’s People’s History Museum is running workshops on the 1980s miners’ strike, which forged alliances between gay activists and trade unions. And in Bradford, Hockney’s hometown, a new mural celebrates the city’s first openly gay mayor.
Yet the celebration comes against a backdrop of rising hate crime. Homophobic offences reported to police in England and Wales rose by 39 per cent in the year to March 2024. The cost of living crisis is hitting LGBTQ+ charities hard, with many seeing a surge in demand for mental health support. “It’s a double world,” said Samir Ahmed, director of the LGBTQ+ foundation. “We have a painting worth more than most people’s houses, and we have young people sleeping on sofas because their families threw them out. The art market doesn’t care about them.”
Hockney himself has always been sceptical of the market. In a rare interview last year, he said: “I just paint. If someone pays a lot, that’s their business. But I never made a painting for the price. I made it because I wanted to see two men in a garden, happy.”
The irony is that this happiness is now a museum piece. The buyer is expected to lend the painting to the new LGBTQ+ cultural centre planned for the East End of London, where it will be viewed by schoolchildren and tourists. But the economics of access remain fraught: the centre’s café will charge £4 for a slice of cake, while the painting’s insurance policy is valued at £50 million.
For now, the record stands. And as the sun sets over Hockney’s imaginary garden, one thing is clear: love is not cheap.
