Spring Cannot Be Cancelled : David Hockney in Normandy

David Hockney's reflections on life and art, drawn from conversations during his time self-isolating in rural Normandy, alongside his iPad drawings and paintings.

On turning eighty, David Hockney sought out rustic tranquillity for the first time: a place to watch the sunset and the changing seasons, and to keep the noise of the world at bay. When Covid-19 and lockdown followed, life at La Grande Cour―the centuries-old Normandy farmhouse where he had set up a studio a year earlier―continued much as before, as he worked on paintings capturing the arrival of spring. In fact, he relished the enforced isolation as an opportunity for even greater devotion to his art.

Spring Cannot Be Cancelled is an uplifting meditation on art’s capacity to divert and inspire. It is based on conversations and correspondence between Hockney and art critic Martin Gayford, his long-time friend and collaborator. Their exchanges are illustrated with Hockney’s pandemic-era drawings and paintings of Normandy, alongside works by Van Gogh, Monet, Bruegel, and others.

We see how Hockney was propelled by his infectious enthusiasm and sense of wonder. A lifelong contrarian, he remained unconcerned with critical opinion or historical judgment. During lockdown, he immersed himself in northern France and the themes that had long fascinated him: light, color, space, perception, water, and trees.

142 color illustrations

Martin Gayford is a writer and art critic. He is the author of acclaimed books on Van Gogh, Constable, and Michelangelo. His books include My Heart Is This: Tracey Emin on Painting, How Painting Happens (and why it matters), Man with a Blue Scarf: On Sitting for a Portrait with Lucian Freud, Modernists & Mavericks: Bacon, Freud, Hockney, and the London Painters, A Bigger Message: Conversations with David Hockney, Spring Cannot be Cancelled: David Hockney in Normandy (with David Hockney), Love Lucian: The Letters of Lucian Freud 1939–1954 (with David Dawson), and Venice: City of Pictures.

David Hockney (1937–2026) was one of the most influential British artists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. He produced work in almost every medium―painting, drawing, stage design, photography, and printmaking―and stretched the boundaries of all of them. During his lifetime, he published numerous books with Thames & Hudson, including Hockney's Pictures, The World According to David Hockney, Spring Cannot be Cancelled: David Hockney in Normandy, and David Hockney by David Hockney (first published in 1976 with a 50th anniversary edition forthcoming in 2026). Thames & Hudson also published the catalog for his major retrospective at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in 2025.