Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) – David Hockney

Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) is a large acrylic-on-canvas Pop Art painting by British artist David Hockney, completed in May 1972. It measures 2.1 m × 3.0 m, and depicts two figures: one swimming underwater and one clothed male figure looking down at the swimmer. In November 2018, it sold for US$90.3 million, the highest price ever paid at auction for a painting by a living artist

This work brings together two of Hockney’s themes from his paintings of the late 1960s and early 1970s: the swimming pool, and the double portrait. It depicts a male figure in white trunks swimming breaststroke underwater, and the painter Peter Schlesinger, Hockney’s former lover and muse, fully clothed and standing at the edge of the pool looking down at the swimmer. The painting is set in southern France, near Saint-Tropez. In characteristic Hockney style, the foreground is simplified and flattened with a view of tree-clad hills in the background..