David Hockney’s trees ‘massacred’

David Hockney has had to axe his grand plan to paint the four seasons after discovering that the century-old copse of trees he had chosen as his subject have been chopped down.
 
Hockney has already painted the sycamore and beech trees near his home in East Yorkshire in summer and winter. When he turned up at the T junction near the village of Warter on Wednesday to begin his study of spring, he found nothing but sawn trunks and discarded branches. The artist describes the result as "a massacre... like a scene from the first world war".
 
Hockney has spent the past two years photographing and sketching the trees, last visiting the copse two months ago. "I knew I was coming back to do more," he told the Guardian, "but I didn't think there was any rush about it."
 
He said of the tree-felling: "I admit they had a perfect right to do this - but it seems sad. If they had pulled down a great church people would have seen and asked questions, but nobody asked about these trees. Nobody asks enough questions any more."
 
The two completed paintings, Summer and Winter, will go on exhibition next month at the Wurtz museum in Kunzelsau, Germany. ·