David Hockney (born 1937) is an English artist who has received great critical acclaim for the representational nature of his portraits and his depictions of the Californian landscape. Born in Bradford, Yorkshire to a working-class family, Hockney went on to a prize-winning career as a student at the Royal College of Art. At only 26, he had his first one-man show and in 1967 was awarded first prize in the John Moores Exhibition. Hockney worked in a variety of fields as a painter, draftsman, printmaker, photographer, and designer. Although he rejected the label ‘Pop’, much of his work contains references to popular culture and contains a good deal of humor. The Californian swimming pool was one of his favorite subjects, indicating his love affair with Los Angeles.

Until 2019, Hockney held the record for most expensive artwork sold at auction by a living artist, with his work "Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)" selling for $90 million at Christie's. His work can be found in collections at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Portrait Gallery, the Tate Museum, the Getty Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.