‘His last kiss to the world’: David Hockney’s return to Yorkshire triggered a glorious reawakening

When the artist came home from LA, it seemed like a retirement. But it heralded an astonishing new chapter. Our critic remembers their thrilling dinners together – and the dazzling new works that arrived in his inbox every morning

It was springtime in Paris and I was floating among young green leaves and white blossom – but I was not in a park. I was on an upper floor of the Fondation Louis Vuitton delighting, wallowing in several of David Hockney’s iPad paintings of his garden in Normandy. In one room, this green oasis was shown by the light of the silvery moon: the darkened chamber was alive with shining white lunar discs, blue clouds and the shadowy fingers of tree branches.

It was early April last year and this was the opening of David Hockney 25, a blockbuster show, curated with his close involvement, covering his entire career – but with an emphasis on his work this century. What a bold and bloody-minded spectacle it was, insisting that Hockney’s later pictures of straw bales and ponds are just as good if not better than his famous early swimming pools and sexy portraits. And what a triumph! With extraordinary aplomb, Hockney made his point. You went from gazing in awe at some of his greatest early paintings, basking in their Californian and swinging London light, to suddenly standing in Yorkshire fields in the early 21st century, taking in views of emerald hedgerows and purple trees. And it all suddenly made sense.