David Hockney has always been fascinated how perspective works and it’s relation to two dimensional representation. So my August painting of the month celebrates his contribution to modern thinking. It is inspired by my visit to the current exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. This self portrait from 2021 is hung next to Hogarth’s portrait of George Arnold. Hockney holds great stock in portraitists revealing the person in the brushwork and admires Hogarth as one of the greats.

Hockneys Eye not only looks at how perspective has been addressed over the years in art but exposes how, he believes, the Old Masters created some of the great photo-realistic works. Perspective in two dimensional painting is based on the principle of the vanishing point and was ‘discovered’ in modern times by the Renaissance masters, Brunelleschi, Donatello and Masaccio.

But Hockney, like others before him such as Ceźanne and Picasso, realised that things just don’t look like a vanishing point image. They believe that because we have two eyes and ability to interpolate time things do not look photographic in reality. That is why painted art with its ‘real’ perspective looks so much truer than a photograph.

Hockney has always avoided photographs in his art but does not deny their value in creating art. He embraces technology and has championed the use of iPad for the creation of artworks. The exhibition also champions his opinion that even the great masters used optical aids such as the camera obscura and camera Lucida. He even uses photographs. It is not cheating – just part of the creative process.

Hockneys Eye is at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, until 29th August.