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The frontispiece for Hockney’s Six Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm portfolio and book features Catherina Dorothea Viehmann, the elderly German woman who recounted fairy tales to the Grimm brothers when they were in their late twenties. Per Hockney: “This etching is done from an engraving of her, and I just thought it might be interesting for people to know a bit about her, although it’s not mentioned in the book. I suppose people wonder who on earth she is.”
“The stories weren’t written by the Brothers Grimm…they came across this woman called Catherina Dorothea Viehmann, who told 20 stories to them in this simple language, and they were so moved by them that they wrote them down word for word as she spoke”. Hockney drew the German woman in the style of Dürer, formally posed yet naturalistic against an impeccably crosshatched swath of grey. The composition mirrors almost exactly Dürer’s ‘Portrait of the Artist’s Mother’ (1514), a fitting reference for Hockney who has drawn countless portraits of his own mother.
Catherine Dorothea Viehmann (Six Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm) 1969
Etching and aquatint on W S Hodgkinson paper watermarked “DH” and “PP”
Plate 11 x 8.9 in / 28 x 22.5 cm
Paper 24.75 x 17.5 in / 62.87 x 44.45 cm
Unique publisher’s copy aside from the edition of 400 books and 100 portfolios
Some waviness as published
