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David Hockney drew this portrait for his Six Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm illustrations. The princess, who has stated that she will marry no one but he who can hide from her successfully, searches beyond her tower for a boy who has concealed himself. The topmost platform of the tower is rendered in rich dark grey with layers of crosshatching and aquatint, a technique that Hockney used for the first time in this series. The windows around the female figure is rendered simply with a few lines to suggest their glassy surface.
Hockney has humorously placed the boy hiding inside the princess, whereas the original tale places him tangled in her hair. Because her tower has no mirrors—only windows—she is unable to see him. Of his change, the artist stated: “…maybe I’m adding more to the story than was ever intended, but these are strangely and oddly odd stories.”
Hockney stated: “I liked this story because it’s a very strange sexual story, it seems to me, about a princess who wants a husband, but doesn’t want a husband. I mean, the story is that the husband must be able to hide from her, yet she lives in a tower with twelve windows where she can see everything. So it’s as though she wants something, yet she doesn’t want something, and sometimes I interpreted the story, you see, as really her desire for a child. So here she is, anyway, up the top of a tower looking out of the windows (‘The Princess in her tower’), and the boy who wants to marry her hides, first of all, in an egg (‘The boy hidden in an egg’). The bird tells him to hide in an egg, but she looks through a window and she can find him. The figure was drawn from life.”
“I had somebody pose crouched-up like that. Then he hides in a fish (‘The boy hidden in a fish’), but she still sees him and finally he changes into this sea-hare – which is some mythical creature like a unicorn – and he hides himself in her hair. So when she looks through her windows, because none of her windows is a mirror she cannot see him. And I interpreted this. Instead of putting him in her hair, I put him as though he’s inside her (‘The Princess searching’), which is like a child. I mean, maybe I’m adding more to the story than was ever intended, but these are strangely and oddly odd stories.”
The Princess searching (Six Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm) 1969
Etching and aquatint on W S Hodgkinson paper watermarked “DH” and “PP”
Plate 10.5 x 6.7 in / 26.7 x 17 cm
Paper 17.75 x 16 in / 45.09 x 40.64 cm
Unique publisher’s copy aside from the edition of 400 books and 100 portfolios
