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The Arrival of Spring and the Question of Depth
The Hockney print market has responded in parallel. In 2025, Phillips presented its fourth annual David Hockney prints and editions sale. The sale surpassed its presale estimate, though it offered the lowest lot count to date – roughly half the size of some previous editions.
The first two editions of the series achieved 100% sell-through rates, establishing early confidence in the format. By the third sale, nuance entered the narrative when an edition of 10 Arrival of Spring, 16th of May went unsold. This didn’t derail the sale or the broader market, but a high-value pass at public auction inevitably introduces hesitation into a series that had been driving momentum.
That moment prompted commentary. The risk, however, is reading isolated results as structural weakness rather than part of a broader pricing cycle.
That hesitation proved temporary. In June 2025, Arrival of Spring, 4th May (edition of 10) sold at Christie’s for £504,000, matching the previous record set in 2022 for that variation. During the same June sales, Sotheby’s achieved £406,400 for Arrival of Spring, 31st May, No. 1 (edition of 10) – then the second-highest price recorded for the series.
By October, Sotheby’s announced a dedicated sale of 17 Arrival of Spring works (edition of 25) from a single private collection. All shared matching edition numbers, a rare cohesion that created additional collecting incentive. Six variations were fresh to the market and each resale work outperformed its previous transaction, with gains ranging from 7% to over 1200%.
The resulting prices were achieved under highly specific conditions: coordinated release, aligned edition numbers and concentrated attention. Rarely, do those levels automatically, and immediately, replicate outside that framework. Even so, early 2026 examples have continued to transact firmly, indicating that the private collection release has maintained valuation influence.
The more immediate test comes next week, when Sotheby’s offers the final tranche from the same collection. The structure remains consistent – matching edition numbers (15/25), comparable estimates and several fresh-to-market compositions, including examples with distinctive road markings that have historically attracted premiums.
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