The Beverly Hills Housewife

Hockney’s Californian Muse and the World Beyond the Pool

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£25.00
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Hailed by the Guardian as 'Sun-drenched ... charming', this is a panoramic view of 1960s LA and Californian culture seen through the eyes of a young David Hockney and the enigmatic socialite Betty Freeman

In the summer of 1966, David Hockney paid a visit to a wealthy Los Angeles art collector. Her name was Betty Freeman. He had intended to paint her swimming pool, but was rapidly entranced by Freeman herself.

Hockney, soon to embark on a series of Los Angeles paintings that would become icons of their time and place, immortalized Freeman in Beverly Hills Housewife (1966–67), a sunlit vision of the collector on the terrace of her modernist home. Evoking the light and easy glamour of 1960s Los Angeles, the painting is one of the artist’s most seductive works, but it has always carried an air of mystery. Who was the woman in pink?

Like Hockney driving through the Hollywood Hills, James Cahill meanders – interweaving the artist’s discovery of Los Angeles with Freeman’s own evolution from aspiring pianist to photographer, philanthropist and collector – but never loses focus on the art. Oscillating between art history and anecdote, this is an eclectic study of an artist, his enigmatic muse and the beginning of a friendship that would shape the course of each of their lives.
Extent: 272 pp
Format: Hardback
Illustrations: 68
Publication date: 2026-08-27
Size: 23.4 x 15.3 cm
ISBN: 9780500028810
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Press Reviews

I love this book. It is truly illuminating, and seems to inhabit that particular quality of Californian light – an extraordinary way of navigating friendship, place and collecting
Edmund de Waal

A trip inside Hockney’s world … [a] sun-drenched book about art, eccentricity, and the spirit of Los Angeles … a polished mix of anecdote and art history … [Cahill’s] book is much like its primary source: charming, clever, and difficult to pin down
Guardian

Cahill writes beautifully, and his account of Hockney and Freeman’s friendship is deeply moving
Lynn Barber, The Spectator

The intriguing story of a Hockney muse … captures the hedonism, sunshine and social circles that inspired the British artist in 1960s California
The Financial Times

About the Author

James Cahill is a British art critic, curator and author. Cahill earned a degree in Classics and English at Magdalen College, Oxford, followed by a Master's degree in Contemporary Art from the Courtauld Institute. In 2017, he completed a PhD in Classics at Cambridge University. He has written for Apollo, CURA, Elephant, Frieze, The Burlington Magazine, Times Literary Supplement and others, and is the author of Tiepolo Blue (2022), Lives of the Artists: David Hockney (2021) and Ways of Being: Advice for Artists by Artists (2018). He is based between London and Los Angeles.

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