This David Hockney ‘California Dreaming’ Painting Could Fetch Up to $18 Million at Auction

Phillips’s upcoming modern and contemporary art evening sale in New York will feature a painting of a Californian home by David Hockney with a $12 million–$18 million estimate. It will be among the top lots to be offered in the sale, which is scheduled to take place on June 23 at the auction house’s new Park Avenue headquarters.

A Neat Lawn, made in 1967 as part of Hockney’s “California Dreaming” series, depicts a manicured green lawn in front of a concrete residential building, with a sprinkler system spraying water on the grass.

More from Robb Report

• Prince's Guitar and a Kurt Cobain Self Portrait Both Sold for Over $280,000 at Auction This Weekend

• Veuve Clicquot Teamed Up With Yayoi Kusama to Bring Its Latest Bubbly to the New York Botanical Garden

• This 1933 Double Eagle, the 'Mona Lisa' of Collector Coins, Just Sold for a Record $18.9 Million

“A Neat Lawn is one of the most significant examples of Hockney’s ‘California Dreaming’ paintings, long considered among his greatest achievements,” Phillips’s deputy chairman and co-head of 20th century and contemporary art, Robert Manley said in a statement. The work last sold at Christie’s in 2006 for $3.6 million, a record price for the artist at the time.

Since then, Hockney’s auction prices have skyrocketed. Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures), 1972, sold for $90.3 million at Christie’s New York in November 2019, making him one of the most expensive living artists at auction. West Coast art collector and real estate developer Richard Hedreen sold another California scene, Nichols Canyon (1980), at Phillips for $41 million during the house’s 20th century and contemporary art evening sale in New York in December 2020.

The Hockney will hit the block at Phillips alongside Wayne Thiebaud’s painting Winding River (2002), which is expected to fetch $6 million, and Matthew Wong’s landscape Field in a Dream (2014–17), which is expected to fetch $1.5 million.

Best of Robb Report

• The 25 Most Expensive Homes in the World for Sale

• The 10 Priciest Neighborhoods in America (And How They Got to Be That Way)

• In Pictures: Most Expensive Properties

Sign up for Robb Report's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.