A Gap in the Hedgerow (detail from Midsummer: East Yorkshire 2004) © David Hockney, photo Richard Schmidt

Recent watercolours by David Hockney are featured in an exhibition at London’s Gilbert Collection, showing the Bradford-born artist’s return to subjects in his native Yorkshire.

Midsummer: East Yorkshire 2004 is running until February 19 2006 at the gallery in Somerset House on the Strand. Hockney is one of Britain’s best-known living artists and the exhibition highlights his first serious foray into the watercolour medium.

Bridlington. Rooftops and Clouds (detail from Midsummer: East Yorkshire 2004) © David Hockney. Photo: Richard Schmidt

The 36 paintings only measure 57cm by 38cm but are arranged in six rows of six so that they form a ‘sweep of vision’ and can be viewed individually or as one greater work.

They depict the countryside that Hockney first came to know during his childhood and teenage years, when he spent summers working as an agricultural labourer in the Wolds. He started to return to this rural area from the late 1980s when his mother moved to the seaside town of Bridlington.

Hockney concentrated almost exclusively on watercolours from 2002 to early 2005, seeking inspiration from the great British landscape painters of the 19th century. He has used landscape as a recurrent theme since early works in the mid-1950s and made cityscapes of Bradford while he was a student.

Roads and Cornfields, East Yorkshire (detail from Midsummer: East Yorkshire 2004.) © David Hockney, photo Richard Schmidt

Hockney had reached an international audience by his mid-20s and was hailed as an innovator of the Pop Art movement in the 1960s. Though he's now advancing in years, this latest exhibition shows his work continues to be fresh, if now tinged with nostalgia.

The Gilbert Collection of decorative arts opened to the public in 2000 and comprises around 800 works of art collected over 40 years by the late Sir Arthur Gilbert, who died in 2001. It includes rare gold, silver, mosaics and snuffboxes and is one of the most important collections of art donated to the nation.