Christie’s to Offer a Nearly 40-Foot David Hockney Print Estimated at £300,000
A single sheet of paper, nearly 40 feet long, is about to test the upper reaches of the edition market.
Christie’s will present “Autour de la maison, été,” a monumental print by David Hockney (British, b. 1937), in its online Contemporary Edition sale running March 17 to 31. The work carries a high estimate of £300,000 ($400,000), a figure that underscores both the scale of the object and the sustained appetite for blue-chip prints.
Printed as one continuous image, “Autour de la maison, été” ranks among Hockney’s largest and most ambitious works in the medium. The scene is rooted in the artist’s home and garden in Normandy, rendered at the height of summer. Hockney’s composition is dense with lived detail: trees, grass, and hedgerows set the frame, while medieval barns, a swing set, a treehouse, and parked vehicles punctuate the landscape. The result is less a single vista than an immersive, panoramic inventory of place.
The lot’s appearance at auction arrives amid a conspicuous London moment for Hockney. A new exhibition of his work is opening at the Serpentine Gallery, and the city is also preparing for the British Museum’s planned display of the Bayeux Tapestry. Hockney has publicly criticized the museum’s plan to bring the medieval embroidery to London, calling it “madness” and warning that the fragile work could suffer irreversible harm in transit.
Christie’s is positioning the Hockney within a broader seasonal program of online sales. Contemporary Edition, focused on late 20th-century and contemporary prints as well as editions by emerging artists, follows Prints and Multiples (March 12 to 25), which includes works by major 19th- and 20th-century names. Both sales will be available for public viewing at Christie’s London beginning this weekend.
The auction house has been emphasizing the category’s resilience. Christie’s reported global prints sales of $70.3 million in 2025, with its EMEA department generating $31 million across Old Master, modern, and contemporary prints. Recent benchmarks include a record $4.1 million result for a print by Rembrandt van Rijn and a new auction record for a print by William Blake.
Against that backdrop, “Autour de la maison, été” reads as both a market proposition and a statement about what edition-making can be at its most expansive: not a modest multiple, but a work that approaches the physical presence of a mural while remaining, unmistakably, a print.
