To honor Silver’s achievement in fostering the arts and reviving Saltaire’s sense of community, Hockney paints the scene at Salts Mill, the cultural center focused on his work that Silver started in an abandoned building at the heart of the town.
I’d painted Saltaire, for Jonathan; I wanted him to see it as I see it now, and also for him to know how I’d remembered it as well. Salts Mill is about time and the history of the place, and many places like it. By that I mean, for instance, the rows of houses to the right of the Mill never came down the hill like that. You would actually have to be inside the Mill looking out to achieve that perspective effect. But I grew up in Bradford in small terraces jammed together just like that, and I remember Saltaire as a busy working mill—literally the hub of the whole community.
