Tate to Receive Huge Hockney Gift

LONDON—David Hockney has announced he will donate his largest painting to the Tate, reports the Times (London).

Bigger Trees Near Warter measures 40 by 15 feet and consists of 50 separate canvases. It was created to fill the end wall of the Royal Academy's largest gallery, where it was displayed last year. The value of the work has not been disclosed.

Three years ago Tate director Nicholas Serota announced that 23 artists, mostly British, had agreed to donate one work to the museum. Only eight have done so so far.

“The Tate had been asking me for some time for a work of art,” Hockney said. “I felt a duty and as an Englishman I wanted to give something to Tate Britain.”

The work depicts a copse of trees beside a county road in Yorkshire, where the 70-year-old artist now lives. It will join 108 other Hockney works in the Tate's collection.