Frances Hodgkins
Encyclopedia
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
, but spent most of her working life in Britain. She is considered one of New Zealand's most prestigious and influential painters, although it is the work from her life in Europe, rather than her home country, on which her reputation rests.
Life
Hodgkins was born in DunedinDunedin
Dunedin is the second-largest city in the South Island of New Zealand, and the principal city of the Otago Region. It is considered to be one of the four main urban centres of New Zealand for historic, cultural, and geographic reasons. Dunedin was the largest city by territorial land area until...
, New Zealand in 1869, the daughter of W.M. Hodgkins, a lawyer, amateur painter a leading figure in the city's art circles.
As a girl she attended Braemar House, a private girls' secondary school, later incorporated into Columba College
Columba College
Columba College is an integrated presbyterian school in Roslyn, Dunedin, New Zealand. The roll is made up of pupils of all ages...
. She first exhibited in 1890, although she felt overshadowed by her sister, Isobel. In 1893 she became a student of Girolamo Nerli
G. P. Nerli
Girolamo Pieri Pecci Ballati Nerli, known more commonly as Girolamo Nerli was an Italian painter who worked and travelled in Australia and New Zealand in the late 19th century influencing Charles Conder and Frances Hodgkins and helping to move Australian and New Zealand art in new directions...
who inspired her first successes. It has been suggested this is where she first met Dorothy Kate Richmond
Dorothy Kate Richmond
Dorothy Kate Richmond was a New Zealand painter noted for her watercolor paintings of natural plants and animals and panoramic landscapes.-Biography:...
(1860–1935). In 1895-96 she attended the Dunedin School of Art. Her watercolor painting
Watercolor painting
Watercolor or watercolour , also aquarelle from French, is a painting method. A watercolor is the medium or the resulting artwork in which the paints are made of pigments suspended in a water-soluble vehicle...
won early recognition.
In 1901 she left New Zealand for Europe, travelling to Britain but also visiting France, the Netherlands, Italy and Morocco in the company of Dorothy Kate Richmond
Dorothy Kate Richmond
Dorothy Kate Richmond was a New Zealand painter noted for her watercolor paintings of natural plants and animals and panoramic landscapes.-Biography:...
; 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.".
She returned to New Zealand and established a studio in Wellington
Wellington
Wellington is the capital city and third most populous urban area of New Zealand, although it is likely to have surpassed Christchurch due to the exodus following the Canterbury Earthquake. It is at the southwestern tip of the North Island, between Cook Strait and the Rimutaka Range...
, where she held a joint exhibition with Richmond in 1904. Among her pupils was Edith Kate Bendall, lover of Katherine Mansfield
Katherine Mansfield
Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp Murry was a prominent modernist writer of short fiction who was born and brought up in colonial New Zealand and wrote under the pen name of Katherine Mansfield. Mansfield left for Great Britain in 1908 where she encountered Modernist writers such as D.H. Lawrence and...
. In the same year Hodgkins became engaged to a British man, T. Boughton Wilby, after the briefest of courtships. She planned to go overseas to marry him, but the engagement was broken off at the last moment for unknown reasons.
In 1906, dissatisfied with teaching in New Zealand, Hodgkins returned to London. Her first solo show was in London in 1907.
In 1911-12 she taught in Paris at Colarossi's academy
Académie Colarossi
The Académie Colarossi is an art school founded by the Italian sculptor Filippo Colarossi. First located on the Île de la Cité, it moved in the 1870s to 10 rue de la Grande-Chaumière in the VIe arrondissement of Paris, France....
.
During World War I she spent some time in Zennor
Zennor
Zennor is a village and civil parish in Cornwall in England. The parish includes the villages of Zennor, Boswednack and Porthmeor and the hamlet of Treen. It is located on the north coast, about north of Penzance. Alphabetically, the parish is the last in Britain—its name comes from the Cornish...
, Cornwall, where she worked with the Swansea painter, Cedric Morris
Cedric Morris
Sir Cedric Lockwood Morris, 9th Baronet was a British artist, art teacher and plantsman. He was born in Swansea but worked mainly in East Anglia...
, who painted her portrait in 1917. She herself began to paint in oils in 1915.
In 1919, after the War, she 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 first one-person show in London at the Claridge Gallery in 1928.
From the late 1920s she began to develop her own style, characterised by strong use of colour and lyrical treatment of form. In 1929 she joined the Seven and Five Society
Seven and Five Society
The Seven and Five Society was an art group of seven painters and five sculptors created in 1919 and based in London.The group was originally intended to encompass traditional, conservative artistic sensibilities...
and worked alongside younger artists including Barbara Hepworth
Barbara Hepworth
Dame Barbara Hepworth DBE was an English sculptor. Her work exemplifies Modernism, and with such contemporaries as Ivon Hitchens, Henry Moore, Ben Nicholson, Naum Gabo she helped to develop modern art in Britain.-Life and work:Jocelyn Barbara Hepworth was born on 10 January 1903 in Wakefield,...
, Ben Nicholson
Ben Nicholson
Benjamin Lauder "Ben" Nicholson, OM was a British painter of abstract compositions , landscape and still-life.-Background and Training:...
and Henry Moore
Henry Moore
Henry Spencer Moore OM CH FBA was an English sculptor and artist. He was best known for his semi-abstract monumental bronze sculptures which are located around the world as public works of art....
. In 1930, it is said, she was the person who finally "goaded" her friend Lucy Wertheim
Lucy Wertheim
Lucy Carrington Wertheim was a British Gallery owner who founded the Twenties Group of "English artists in their twenties" in 1930 and was Christopher Wood's main patron before his death....
into opening her gallery in London to exhibit "artists who had not yet arrived". During the 1930s Hodgkins exhibited with many important London galleries and gained a contract from the Lefevre Gallery to produce work for a full-scale exhibition every second year. 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. She was highly considered among British avant-garde society and by the later stages of her career was known as a key figure in British Modernism.
Because of World War II she spent the rest of her life in Britain. She continued to paint into her seventies, despite suffering from rheumatism and bronchitis. She died in Dorchester, Dorset on 13 May 1947. When she died she was regarded as one of Britain’s leading artists. In 1948 Myfanwy Evans (later Piper) wrote a study entitled Frances Hodgkins, as part of the 'Penguin Modern Painters' series.
Frances Hodgkins is most admired for the freely painted works of her later life. She is an artistic descendant of Henri Matisse
Henri Matisse
Henri Matisse was a French artist, known for his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter...
and a lyrical colourist.
Fellowship
The Frances Hodgkins FellowshipFrances Hodgkins Fellowship
The Frances Hodgkins Fellowship, established in 1962, is one of New Zealand's premier arts residencies. The list of past fellows includes many of New Zealand's most notable artists.The position is based at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand...
, established in 1962 at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, is named after her.
External links
from the Dictionary of New Zealand BiographyDictionary of New Zealand Biography
The Dictionary of New Zealand Biography contains biographies for over 3,000 New Zealanders. It is available in both English and Maori. All volumes of the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography are available online....
- Biography in 1966 An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand
- Notes by Una Platts
- Frances Hodgkins: New Zealand exhibitions, biography and works for sale
- Tate: Francis Hodgkins
- Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki: Works by Frances Hodgkins
- Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa: Francis Hodgkins
- Frances Hodgkins' close friendships with women