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Frances Hodgkins | |
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| Born | 28 April 1869 Dunedin, New Zealand |
| Died | 13 May 1947(1947-05-13) (aged 78) Dorchester, Dorset, England |
| Resting place | Waikanae Cemetery |
| Education | Columba College Dunedin School of Art and Design London Polytechnic |
| Known for | Modernist artist |
| Movement | British Modernism |
| Website | www |
Frances Mary Hodgkins (28 April 1869 – 13 May 1947) was aNew Zealand painter chiefly of landscape, and for a short period was a designer of textiles. Born inDunedin, she was educated atDunedin School of Art, then became an art teacher, earning money to study in England.
Amodernist artist, Hodgkins' artworks were known for abstracted, simplified forms and a strong emphasis oncolour values and relationships. Hodgkins was considered to be a key figure in British Modernism, also considered one of New Zealand's most prestigious and influential painters. However, it is the work from Hodgkins' life in Europe, rather than her home country, on which her reputation rests.[1]
Hodgkins was born inDunedin, New Zealand, in 1869, the daughter of Rachel Owen Parker andW. M. Hodgkins, a lawyer, amateur painter, and a leading figure in the city's art circles.[2]
She and her sister,Isabel (later Field) attendedBraemar House, a private girls' secondary school; both sisters demonstrated artistic talent early on and each became a successful landscape painter in their own right.[2] Her father was declared bankrupt in 1888, and money remained an issue for Hodgkins throughout her life.
Hodgkins first exhibited landscapes and portraits in 1890 at art societies inChristchurch and Dunedin. In 1893, Hodgkins became a student ofGirolamo Nerli and painted numerous studies of female sitters, one of which earned her the New Zealand Academy of Arts' prize for painting from life in 1895 (Head of an Old Woman).[3] Hodgkin's portraits of Māori are, like many byEllen von Meyern andGottfried Lindauer, associated with symbolic portraits of demure females with or without a child.[4] In 1895–96 Hodgkins attended theDunedin School of Art and subsequently became an art teacher, earning money to study in England.[3]
In 1901, Hodgkins left New Zealand for Europe, enrolling in art school in London but also travelling and painting in France, the Netherlands, Italy and Morocco in the company of friend and fellow artistDorothy Kate Richmond; whom she described as "the dearest woman with the most beautiful face and expression. I am a lucky beggar to have her as a travelling companion."[5] While in Britain she intermittently met up withMargaret Stoddart, another expatriate artist.[6] In 1903, one of Hodgkins' watercolours from this period (Fatima) became the first work by a New Zealander to be hung "on the line" at the Royal Academy of Arts in London.[3]
She returned to New Zealand in 1903 and established a teaching studio inWellington, where she held a joint exhibition with Richmond in 1904. Among her pupils was Edith Kate Bendall, lover ofKatherine Mansfield. In the same year Hodgkins became engaged to a British man, T. Boughton Wilby, but the engagement was broken off and she returned to London in 1906 to pursue her artistic career.
In Europe, Hodgkins held her first solo show at the Paterson's Gallery in London in 1907 and in 1908 was awarded the joint first award (value £50), withThea Proctor, in a Franco-British exhibition in London to mark the fourth anniversary of theEntente Cordiale agreement.[7] Later that year she moved to Paris. In In 1910 she began teaching in Paris atAcademie Colarossi as the first woman to be appointed instructor in the school.[8] She also founded a School for Water Colour in Concarneau.[9] During this time she exhibited numerous watercolours at the Paris salon and came in contact with Canadian artist,Emily Carr, whom she taught while working on seascapes atConcarneau in Brittany.
During World War I she spent some time inZennor, Cornwall, where she worked with the Swansea painter,Cedric Morris, who painted her portrait in 1917.[10] She herself began to paint in oils in 1915.
In 1919, after the WWI, Hodgkins went to France, where she was influenced by Matisse and Derain, but developed her own highly personal style, which made a strong impact at her one-person show in London at the Claridge Gallery in 1928. While in France she visited Nice in 1924 and there metMargaret Butler, a notable New Zealand sculptor.[11]
In 1925, Hodgkins started work as a fabric designer at theCalico Printers' Association (CPA) in Manchester and during her employment visited theExposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs in Paris.[12]
From the late 1920s on her style came to embrace modernist hallmarks such as abstracted, simplified forms and a strong emphasis on colour values and relationships. Although Hodgkins continued to paint people, her work from this period also evidences an interest in fusing conventions of landscape with still life painting.[13] In 1929 she joined theSeven and Five Society and worked alongside younger artists includingBarbara Hepworth,Ben Nicholson andHenry Moore. In 1930, she "goaded" her friendLucy Wertheim into opening her gallery in London to exhibit "artists who had not yet arrived".[14]
During the 1930s Hodgkins exhibited with many prominent London galleries and gained a contract from theLefevre Gallery to produce work for a full-scale exhibition every second year. In 1931 she became a painting companion of fellow New Zealand artistMaude Burge and painted still lifes at Burge's Villa in the garden terrace.Saint-Tropez.[15] Her experimentation with mixing artistic genres continued, resulting in paintings that conflate still life with self-portraiture to sidestep physical appearance in self-representation. In 1939 she was invited to represent Britain at the 1940 Venice Biennale, but wartime travel restrictions meant that her work could not be transported to Venice.[16] She was highly regarded by British avant-garde society and in the later stages of her career was known as a key figure in British Modernism.[17]
Because of World War II Hodgkins spent the rest of her life in Britain. She continued to paint into her seventies, despite suffering from rheumatism and bronchitis. She died inDorchester, Dorset on 13 May 1947. When she died she was regarded as one of Britain's leading artists.[16] After her death her close friend and fellow artistAmy Krauss, boxed up the possessions from her studio and arranged for her ashes to be returned to New Zealand.[18]
In 1948Myfanwy Evans (later Piper) wrote a concise book entitledFrances Hodgkins, as part of the 'Penguin Modern Painters' series, and the two were the only woman author and woman artist in the series of eighteen books.
TheChristchurch City Council finally accepted the watercolourPleasure Garden (1932) into the collection of theRobert McDougall Art Gallery in 1951.[19] The painting had been offered and refused in 1948[20] and was the subject of considerable controversy over the intervening years.[21]
Hodgkins was featured in a 2025 episode of the thirteenth series of BBC's art documentary programmeFake or Fortune, presented by art dealerPhilip Mould and journalistFiona Bruce.[22]
In 2025 she was one of the artists included in theDangerously Modern exhibition at theArt Gallery of New South Wales of works created by Australian women artists in Europe between 1890 and 1940.[7][23]
TheFrances Hodgkins Fellowship, established in 1962 at theUniversity of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, is named after her.
TheDunedin Public Art Gallery, in Dunedin, New Zealand, contains a major collection of almost sixty of Hodgkins' works,[24] and has a dedicated gallery space which displays works by Hodgkins, often alongside works by her contemporaries.[25]
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