The Arrival, from: A Rake's Progress (Scottish Arts Council 17; Tokyo 12)

On his twenty-fourth birthday on 9 July 1961 David Hockney boarded a plane to New York. The Arrival, the first in Hockney's famous re-imagining of Hogarth's morality tale, The Rakes' Progress, vividly evokes the artist's first impressions of the city. Hockney later recalled: 'I was taken by the sheer energy of the place. It was amazingly sexy, and unbelievably easy. People were much more open, and I felt completely free. The city was a total twenty-four hour city. Greenwich Village was never closed, the bookshops were open all night so you could browse, the gay life was much more organised, and I thought, This is the place for me' (David Hockney, May 2010, quoted in: Christopher Simon Sykes, Hockney: The Biography, London, 2011, p. 96-97). The words 'Flying Tiger' emblazoned behind the figure of the artist refers to the name of the charter company with whom Hockney flew to New York.

This print belonged to the artist and lithographer Alan Whitehead, who taught at Manchester Polytechnic before joining the staff at the Manchester Print Workshop.