I hope she likes it, says Hockney of abbey art to honour Queen

DAVID HOCKNEY has unveiled a stained-glass window at Westminster Abbey honouring the Queen “as a countrywoman”, saying: “I hope she’ll like it”.

Designed on an ipad and set in Hockney’s Yorkshire birthplace, it is the 81-year-old artist’s first work in stained glass and is intended to reflect the Queen’s love for, and connection with, the countryside.

Hockney, who once turned down a request to paint the Queen because he was “very busy painting England actually”, was commissioned to create the window to celebrate her reign.

The brightly coloured abstract window of yellow, red, blue, pink, orange and greens, features hawthorn blossom and was, in the words of the artist, “a challenge”. He added that designing it on an ipad, which he also uses for painting, was “a natural thing” because it is “back-lit like a window”.

“It’s a rather celebratory thing,” he said of his choice to base it around nature. “It’s the height of the spring and summer. I know this is a historic place and I know it’s going to last.”

Asked whether he had any response to the window from the Queen, who has seen a sketch and will see the real thing when she visits the abbey in November, said: “Not yet, but I hope she’ll like it. I’m sure she will.”

Westminster Abbey said that the result “reflects the Queen as a countrywoman and her widespread delight in, and yearning for, the countryside”.

The Very Rev Dr John Hall, Dean of Westminster, said: “I’m excited by it. I think there’s absolutely no harm at all in having something which is particular and vibrant and different. Some of the glass here is not very good. Some of it is not too bad, but this has a wonderful, beautiful, easily accessible, vibrant colour. I think people will enjoy it.”