THE work of 25 artists, living and dead, will be splashed across 30,000 billboards throughout the country from Monday - including a picture painted 37 years ago by David Hockney.

The Bradford-born artist's double portrait of his late parents Laura and Kenneth Hockney topped the list as the nation's favourite in a poll of more than 38,000 people on Facebook.

Hockney's work will be shown along with work by John Constable, Grayson Perry, Henry Moore, William Blake and Hans Holbein the Younger.

More than 30,000 billboards and outdoor sites across the UK will display the selection of works. They will include bus shelters, digital poster screens and within more than 2,000 black cabs in London during the exhibition from July 21 to August 31.

This will make it the UK's biggest art exhibition, say the organisers Art Everywhere. But whether the people of Bradford will be able to see the Hockney painting on a billboard here, Art Everywhere was not able to say at the time of publication.

Hockney himself is in Los Angeles, where he has been for the past year or more, and is said to be busily painting portraits.

He painted the portrait of his parents in 1977, six or seven years after his celebrated double portrait of the late fashion designer Ossie Clark and his-then wife Celia Birtwell, Hockney's favourite model.

The seven-strong Hockney family - there were four sons and a daughter - were raised in Steadman Terrace, just off Leeds Road, and then Hutton Terrace, Eccleshill.

One of his brothers Paul, former Lord Mayor of Bradford and leader of the-then Liberal Group on Bradford Council, told the T&A: "When we moved to Eccleshill we went to Eccleshill Methodist Church. We used to put on youth club gang shows and David always did a spot.

"He drew caricatures of people, quick drawings, and gave them away. He always used to draw pictures in the front of hymn books. He always wanted to be an artist."

Since graduating from the Royal College of Art in 1962, where he won the gold medal for painting, Hockney has established an international reputation as a painter, printer, photographer, author and latterly film-maker.

In 2012 the show of his paintings and films of East Yorkshire called A Bigger Picture occupied all 12 exhibition rooms at London's Royal Academy and subsequently toured in Europe and the United States.

Coun Susan Hinchcliffe, Bradford Council's executive member for Employment, Skills and Culture, said: "I am delighted that David Hockney has once again been voted the nation's favourite. He is a magnificent artist and one of Bradford's own. We are proud to have a number of Hockney’s early works in Bradford’s collection."

Cartwright Hall in Lister Park is putting on a Hockney exhibition later this year. It opens on October 18 and will give a broad introduction to the artist's range of work in painting, printing and photography, techniques used and subject matter.