As well as being an excellent conversationalist, Frances Hodgkins was described by friends and acquaintances as extremely witty. And her sense of humour, when painting was going well, sometimes spilled into her compositions, as here in Brown Vase with Flowers, c1930. While there is no reference to the perky little china dog in the title, the artist has given liveliness to a static object, bringing the ornament to life. But her attitude to ornaments wasn’t always positive. In 1902, for example, anxious that their presence might distract them from their work, she and her fellow students were forced to ask their landlady in Dinan, Brittany, to remove some of what she termed ‘the bric-a-brac from floor to ceiling, all sorts of unconsidered trifles in the way of pots & fans & artificial flowers & drapery & ormolu ornaments’ from the room.

Yet at the end of the 1920s, when she began to develop the still life in landscape compositions that were to earn her fame, Hodgkins came to see china shoes, vases, dogs, and similar ornaments as valuable, pouncing on them to add animation to her still life paintings. Hodgkins wrote to friend and dealer Lucy Wertheim in 1929 from Haywards Heath, ‘I am so happy here – painting in the garden – groups of wildflowers, fruit blossoms & funny cottage chimney ornaments. Hodgkins had first met Wertheim while living in Manchester in 1924. Effusive, warm, and full of energy, Wertheim was a great support both morally and financially at the time, and the two remained friends until the early 1930s. Hodgkins, along with Cedric Morris and Lett Haines, encouraged Wertheim to open her modern gallery in London, and the dealer bought up several Hodgkins’ watercolours which she kept in stock. Eventually, Hodgkins tired of Wertheim’s need to envelop her artists to a controlling degree, and their relationship waned, a loss which Wertheim never quite understood.

Hodgkins returned to the theme of ornaments while staying in Dolaucothy in Wales in 1942. She sent a note to one of her current dealers Eardley Knollys, saying ‘I have done masses of work in between showers of torrential rain, in and about the woods & river of Dolaucothy and have even seriously made pictures of the funny chimney ornaments, which do so lend themselves to decoration. I love them – tender silly unarranged things, receptacle for old & faded letters. I always fall for them & always shall…’.

And if we look again at Brown Vase with Flowers, there are other elements that add lively notes. The handsome vase of flowers rises in a stately fashion in the centre of the watercolour, yet the Venetian glass epergne on the left, its upright vase displaying the glass bobbles popular in Murano production, seems to sway as if trying to escape the apples piled around its feet. And while the composition is balanced by the pedestal glass bowl on the right, a tightly bunched cloth under the brown vase is being held down by the little dog’s front paws.

On studying the work more closely, we see that Hodgkins is also playing with our sense of perspective, as the epergne on the left appears to be near the foremost edge of the table (as suggested by the darker vertical brushstrokes that drop away beneath it), but if that is so then the dog and the cloth to the right would tumble into our space. However, when we consider the right-hand side of the painting, the surface seems to reach forward in a stable manner, holding vase and dog in place. In 15th century Italian religious paintings, it was not uncommon for a cloth to be painting draped over a parapet or the edge of a table, as if dropping into the viewer’s space. From her travels, Hodgkins would also have seen examples of Dutch 16th century still life painting, where objects on a table sometimes jut out over the foremost edge, producing a dis-ease for the viewer, the immediate desire being to reach out and catch the dish or bowl before it fell. Even so, as a modernist, Hodgkins’ vision was rooted in the everyday, and she may simply be challenging us to look closely. If so, perhaps the little dog is laughing at the joke.

In 1947, the watercolour was still in the possession of Lucy Wertheim, but whether she had purchased the work from Hodgkins for her own enjoyment, or whether it remained in her gallery store is unknown. She lent the work to the large commemorative exhibition held from August to September at the City of Manchester Art Gallery that year, where it was described as Brown Vase with Flowers, to differentiate it from another work simply called Brown Vase, which Wertheim was obviously familiar with, as a sticker on the back of her own work is inscribed ‘Brown Vase, vertical’, the other composition being in landscape format. .

Written by Mary Kisler.

To Dorothy Selby, 25 June 1931. Sube Hotel, St Tropez, Var.

But this last batch of a dozen drawings is good I think. Definitely it is summer weather now and one is at ones best.

Frances Hodgkins spent the year of 1930 preparing for her October exhibition at St George’s Gallery, London. She was, however, exhausted and in very low spirits. Hodgkins’s close friend, Lett Haines, arranged for her to go first to a cottage in St Osyth near Clacton-on-Sea and then later to a friend’s farm, Wise Follies, near the village of Wilmington in Sussex. It is here that Hodgkins again took up her drawing practice, focussing on the local villages and other still life subjects.

Hodgkins’ preoccupation with conveying movement through line in her drawings originated in the early stages of her career. Her fixation with the still life genre continued on into the 1930’s where she was able to combine a series of separate still life objects as well as their surroundings in an effortless and graceful manner. Hodgkins’ later works proclaim her confidence and the apparent ease with which she was able to wield her pencil - charging it with the same interest that had fuelled her earlier explorations into colour.

The curving lines that sweep across Hodgkins’ drawings invoke a sense of space and freedom, while also appearing to capture fleeting moments in time. In some instances, Hodgkins brought heterogeneous objects together, weaving a composition from items taken from her immediate environment instead of seeing them in abstract terms as she came to do in her later paintings.

This idea is especially prevalent in the present charcoal drawing, The Sitting Room from 1930 - 1931. The work shares several similar key compositional elements with Pleasure Garden painted in 1932, which is held in the permanent collection of the Christchurch Art Gallery. As such, it is likely that The Sitting Room served as a preliminary drawing to Pleasure Garden. Similarities are seen in the design of the table and the curved armrest of the chair, in the right hand corner of The Sitting Room, which are then echoed in the Pleasure Garden. A similarity can also be drawn between the empty bottle and two glasses in The Sitting Room, and the undulating shapes of the wine bottle and glasses in the foreground of the painting in the Christchurch Art Gallery.

Featuring an extremely complex composition, The Sitting Room presents the viewer with numerous pieces of furniture, decorative objects, functional items and patterned fabrics that are all set within a small domestic space. Testament to Hodgkins’ proficiency as a draughtsman and her understanding of pictorial space, The Sitting Room is at once both frenetically busy and quietly calm. The absence of any human presence lends the work a calmative effect, which successfully offsets the busyness of the piece. In doing so, Hodgkins avoids the potential of overwhelming busyness due to the wealth of visual interest. While there is little attempt to show real distance in the work, each object is still given depth and solidity through careful shadowing, which imparts the scene with an empathic domesticity.

_
Written by Grace Alty & Jonathan Gooderham
Edited by Jemma Field

To Dorothy Selby, 21 December 1931. The Nook, Bodinnick-by-Fowey, Cornwall.

‘I am working very hard – searching for subjects; bad light, cold hands – depression all the seven devils as usual.‘

In August 1931 Frances Hodgkins decided to leave the bustling city of London for a quieter life in the country and consequently moved to ‘The Nook’, Bodinnick-by-Fowey in Cornwall. In a letter to Dorothy Selby, Hodgkins wrote, The Nook is neither of the “Rookery” or the “Cosy” sort but suits my needs – no other fool could stand it. Hodgkins painted the surrounding countryside relentlessly, as she feared her contract with galleries in London might be terminated because of the ever-worsening depression, caused by the stock market crash in 1929. Her hard work paid off and in February 1932 she exhibited with the Seven and Five Society and later that year with the Salford Gallery near Manchester, and also with Zwemmer, Tooth’s & Wertheim galleries in London.

Once she settled in, Hodgkins found her new Cornish environment immensely stimulating not only because of the beautiful natural surroundings, but also because of her new neighbours. She wrote of them to Dorothy Selby on the 21st of December 1931, saying:

I enclose a picture of The “Nook” which is my temporary home. The large white house in the right belongs to Sir Gerald du Maurier which he uses as a stage setting only in the summer – But his rather beautiful son-daughter lives here, Daphne, and is [a] rather disturbing feature in the extremely homely little village.

One of the most significant works of Frances Hodgkins’ career, Wings over Water 1931-1932 (Tate Collection, London), is based on the view from her studio window at ‘The Nook’. It is notable that the present painting, Bodinnick, Cornwall was completed at roughly the same time as Wings over Water, and moreover, it was painted from the exact same location. Wings over Water is one of Hodgkins’ most elaborate works that combines a still life of three large shells with a landscape aspect.

In Wings over Water, Hodgkins uses the window as a framing device, placing the shells in close proximity to the viewer in the foreground of the painting. The still life gives way to rolling pastoral hills and an expanse of water, while a fence with a perching parrot demarcates the middle distance. Similarly, in the present work, Bodinnick, Cornwall, Hodgkins’ studio window again acts to frame the piece beyond which the vista rapidly unfolds. Hodgkins’s use of colour is comparatively subdued as broad washes of colour are liberally applied with only a cursory regard for outlines. Movement is effectively conveyed through dashes and strokes of pigment with the scudding clouds being given only the briefest of marks.

The thickly-painted black gate in the foreground of the composition is central to the compositional success of the work. Providing a solid almost tangible presence, the gate gives way to shrubbery, houses and boats that are drawn with a thin, confident line. Indeed, the gate works to guide the viewer through the painting – enticing us to open the gate and wander down into the reality of the narrow streets and the harbour of Bodinnick-by-Fowey. It is significant that a series of watercolours that Hodgkins painted at ‘The Nook’ were selected by the Tate Gallery at this time and sent to Chicago for exhibition, testifying to their compositional success and persuasive allure.

_
Written by Grace Alty & Jonathan Gooderham
Edited by Jemma Field

To Arthur Howell, 8th June 1931; from F. H., Hotel Sube, St Tropez, Var, France.

I shall soon be back again with the bulk of my work to show you ... I have bundles of work and am bristling to finish it - before the weather grows hotter than I can bear. This is a wonderfully nice place - growing hotter & more Bohemian everyday - really amusing to paint.

Frances Hodgkins first visited France in late 1909, when she worked and exhibited in Paris before spending some 15 months in Concarneau, a fishing village in the north west of the country. She returned in Concarneau in August 1914, and in 1920 made her first trip to the south, to the French Riviera, visiting St Tropez, Cassis and Martigues in Provence. A fishing village on one of the mouths of the Rhone known as the Venice of France, Martigues was popular with artists in the late nineteenth century, attracted by its clear light and canals. The main interest here for Hodgkins was the people rather than nature, and she made a number of sketches of the locals and the cafés, but in time her funds began to run out, and at the end of April and for much of May 1921 she was in Brittany in north-west France, searching for a suitable location for a summer school.

Hodgkins returned to Martigues in December 1924, and then again for several months in early 1928. In March 1930 Frances Hodgkins made the significant step of signing her first dealer contract, in this case a ‘sole agency’ contract with Arthur Howell of St George’s Gallery in Hanover Square. This agreement in reality became rather short lived as the depression took hold in England. It stipulated the purchase of 33 watercolours per annum at £3 each, whereupon Hodgkins promised Howell he would receive the best she was capable of.

In 1931 she made her fourth and final visit to Martigues, leaving London in February and travelling via Paris, where she saw a number of exhibitions, including one by Matisse. Back in Martigues she worked on watercolours and pencil drawings which she sent back to the St George’s Gallery in London. In mid-April she moved on to St Tropez, where she met up with the New Zealand painters Gwen Knight (1888-1974) and Maude Burge (1865-1957). It was through this chance encounter with Hodgkins that Knight was encouraged to take herself seriously as a painter. She was also the subject of several paintings by Hodgkins, one of which, Pinewoods or Under the Pines, is in the collection of Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. It was while she was in St Tropez that Hodgkins was advised that her London dealer, St George’s Gallery, had closed, presumably a result of the Depression, and when she returned to London in mid-August she transferred her work to the Lefevre Gallery.

The works Hodgkins produced during this period are all summer paintings, capturing the intense heat of southern France. The subject of the present watercolour painted in the dry heat of the Provencal summer is presented mostly in outline, with the left-hand end wall of the building and what appears to be a lean-to heightened in white. The composition is framed by large foreground trees with sparse ground cover in the foreground and, in the distance and beyond the barn itself, an expanse of green fields. The general treatment suggests a landscape in southern France experiencing the intense heat of a northern summer.

The verso of the present watercolour reveals Hodgkin’s preparatory drawing for this actual work and the complete scene can be clearly distinguished.

Written by Jonathan Gooderham & Richard Wolfe.

In the summer of 1932, Frances Hodgkins and fellow artist Hannah Ritchie set out on a sketching holiday to Norfolk. After finding the landscape flat and uninspiring, the pair instead decided to seek inspiration in the West Country on the banks of the river Severn in Bridgenorth, Shropshire.

Hodgkins wrote at the time to her friend Dorothy Selby:

This place is a complete wash out – Won’t do in any way – from our point of view – Hannah admits she has made a mistake … depressing waste of mud flats on all sides - & flat flat landscape – a lifeless outlook. We have jogged round for 2 days & have decided against staying – she halfheartedly & I very empathetically – and are leaving Tuesday morning for Bridgenorth my old love … I am tingling with impatience to get settled - & at work.

Two Wooden Figures in Sabrina’s Garden is a pencil study completed by Hodgkins whilst in Bridgenorth. The sketch went on to inspire and inform the artist’s major oil Sabrina’s Garden painted circa 1934 – currently held in the collection of the Bristol City Art Gallery. The two female figures however make their first appearance in the watercolour Pleasure Garden, 1932, which features many of the elements – sunflowers, canvas awnings, a table and chairs – present in Sabrina’s Garden. ‘Sabrina’ was the Roman name for river Severn, whose sunny banks inspired this series of work.

Two Wooden Figures is an excellent example of the artist’s refining of ideas. As exemplified by Pleasure Garden, and later by Sabrina’s Garden, the works completed over the course of the summer of 1932 saw Hodgkins move away from her earlier Impressionistic style to embrace a freer more abstract approach with a focus on colour harmonies and essential yet expressive lines.

Whilst her work was critically acclaimed in England and Europe, Hodgkins’ shift towards an unconventional and abstract style caused an enormous amount of controversy back in New Zealand. In 1948 members of the Canterbury Society of Arts sought to purchase some paintings by the artist but upon receiving a selection from the British Council decided against buying any of them. Among them was the serene Pleasure Garden though the tranquillity of the painting seemed lost on a New Zealand audience who reacted with indifference or hostility. Pleasure Garden suddenly became one of the most famous paintings in the country as petitions were signed, letters written and debates had. Three years later in 1951 the new Christchurch council accepted the painting and it is now held in the collection of the Christchurch Art Gallery

Unaware of the controversy that would follow, Hodgkins stated in a letter to Peter Watson of ‘Horizon’ on 14 November 1941 that:

The original painting of Sabrina’s Garden with its two wooden figures is, incidentally, my favourite of that vintage 1930-40.

_
Written by Natalia Deyr

From Frances Hodgkins to Dorothy Selby, 14th August 1932, Kings Lynn, Norfolk

“… we are leaving Tuesday morning for Bridgnorth my old love … I am tingling with impatience to get started - & at work - On reaching Bridgnorth I’ll either wire you - or send you card to reach you Wed: morning - I hope to find rooms all together in the Town nr. river - & promise not to put you up a hill by yourself as last time … Till Thursday then - at Bridgnorth.“

In August 1931, Frances Hodgkins returned to London from Martigues and St Tropez. Four months later she moved to Bodinnick-by-Fowey in Cornwall, attracted by the prospect of painting landscapes. In February 1932 she exhibited at the Leicester Galleries in London with the Seven and Five Society which was formed in 1919. The seven painter members were linked by the freshness and simplicity of their imagery and the direct way in which the paint was applied and, in addition to Hodgkins, they included Winifred Nicholson, Ben Nicholson, Christopher Wood, Ivon Hitchens and Cedric Morris. Morris was a great supporter of Hodgkins’ work, and in 1928 painted her portrait which is in the collection of the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki. Sculptor members of the Society included Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth.

Hodgkins had first shown with the Seven and Five Society in March 1929, when six of her paintings were included in its ninth exhibition. On this occasion the reviewer for The Times considered Hodgkins “most sure of her ground; her two oils, Boy in Wood (FH0853, Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū) and The Garden, were both elegant pictures … grotesque, but consistently so, as if the artist obeyed her natural vision of things.” Hodgkins also had two paintings in the Seven and Five Society’s tenth exhibition in 1931, and in the eleventh the following year she had six. She also exhibited in three other London dealer galleries in 1932; Zwemmer Gallery, Tooths and Wertheim Gallery.

By April 1932, Hodgkins was feeling more financially secure, especially so when the co-director of the Lefevre Galleries in London took her to lunch and offered her a new year-long contract with an annual income of £200 and the probability of renewal. The agreement would be renewed in July 1938, but was cancelled in November the following year because of the outbreak of war. As noted by Iain Buchanan, while a salary of £200 in 1932 was by no means lavish, it was a reasonable sum for an artist at that time, especially so as contemporary art was difficult to sell and economic conditions were uncertain.

As Hodgkins herself commented on her change of fortune with her securing the contract: “Funny how these favours come thick & fast when you are established in safety.”

Later in 1932, Dorothy Selby, who had contacted Hodgkins back in 1923 requesting lessons, visited her at Bodinnick-by-Fowey. They spent time with other friends, including Hannah Ritchie and Jane Saunders in Bridgnorth, an old market town on the Severn in Shropshire where Hodgkins had conducted successful summer painting classes in mid-1926. The combination of the season and the company provided the stimulus for a number of works from this period. As described by Joanne Drayton, they showed the influence of French artists, the “shimmering playfulness and hot piquancy that is more reminiscent of Raoul Dufy than of the British avant-garde.” These works included several inspired by the pleasure boat section of the River Severn, among them Sabrina’s Garden (FH1012, Bristol Museum and Art Gallery), Sabrina being the Roman goddess of the river, and the present Pleasure Boat, Bridgnorth (FH0994). The latter, along with Boathouse on the Severn (FH0998, Private Collection) were among the 32 works in Hodgkins’ New Watercolour Drawings exhibition at the Lefevre Galleries in October/November 1933.

The exhibition also included the 1932 watercolour Pleasure Garden (FH0995, Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū), which was the subject of much controversy in 1948 when it was one of six paintings by Hodgkins sent from London on approval to the Canterbury Society of Arts in Christchurch. When the Society decided against making a purchase, a group of citizens subscribed funds and bought Pleasure Garden for the collection of the city’s Robert McDougall Art Gallery. Debate raged when the City Council declined to accept the offer, and finally, in 1951, when the art gallery’s advisory board was more sympathetic towards modern art, it voted to accept the painting.

The eponymous vessel in Pleasure Boat, Bridgnorth dominates the centre of this composition, with a view of the River Severn and a cluster of tall and closely packed houses and hills beyond. Pleasure Boat, Bridgnorth is painted from a vantage point further along the river, so that rather than the ruined tower of the castle in the High Town, the copper cupola atop the tower of St Mary’s Church leads the eye upwards. Whereas in her 1926 watercolour, cloud billows evenly over the scene, here squiggly clouds drift off above a simplified bridge (a contemporary photograph shows that it had two arches) that leads across to the opposite riverbank.

A distinguishing feature of this watercolour is the artist’s change of perspective; whereas the barge itself is depicted obliquely, from the front, a canoe on the river is seen from directly above, as in a bird’s-eye view. Hodgkins places her major focus on the pleasure boat landing stage further along the river.

The same historical photograph shows how accurately she interpreted it. One of its vessels hoves into sight in the foreground, its ruffled canopy possibly reminded Hodgkins of the popular song, “Surrey with a fringe on top.”

Hers is a witty approach, emphasising the anthropomorphic ‘face’ of the landing stage. The skiff in the foreground mirrors those that populate Poynter’s 19th century watercolour, while the pleasure boat also hovers in her earlier watercolour of Bridgnorth, its structure reflected on the water’s surface. In Pleasure Boat, Bridgnorth, by comparison, Hodgkins captures the liquescence of the water itself, a focus that continued to capture her interest throughout her later career. Importantly, there are no figures here to populate the scene – hers is a pure landscape painting, a study in cloudscapes, riverbank and the Severn itself, the stage’s humorous face addressing the figure beyond the picture plane – that of the viewer, rather than the viewed.

Beyond the vessels in Pleasure Boat, Bridgnorth can be seen the treelined river bank, the narrow and steeply-roofed houses of Bridgnorth captured here in an economic and impressionistic manner, but also showing enough detail to capture the essence of the town.

_
Written by Mary Kisler

To Dorothy Selby, 14th August 1932; from F.H., Kings Lynn, Norfolk:

This place complete washout - won’t do in any way ... and we are leaving Tuesday morning for Bridgnorth my old love … I am tingling with impatience to get started - & at work - On reaching Bridgnorth I’ll either wire you - or send you card to reach you Wed: morning - I hope to find rooms all together in the Town nr. river - & promise not to put you up a hill by yourself as last time … Till Thursday then - at Bridgnorth.

In August 1931 Frances Hodgkins returned to London from Martigues and St Tropez. Four months later she moved to Bodinnick-by-Fowey in Cornwall, attracted by the prospect of painting landscapes. In February 1932 she exhibited at the Leicester Galleries in London with the Seven and Five Society which was formed in 1919. The seven painter members were linked by the freshness and simplicity of their imagery and the direct way in which the paint was applied and, in addition to Hodgkins, they included Winifred Nicholson (1893-1981), Ben Nicholson (1894-1982), Christopher Wood (1901-30), Ivon Hitchens (1893-1979) and Cedric Morris (1889-1982). Morris was a great supporter of Hodgkins’s work, and in 1928 painted her portrait which is in the collection of the Auckland Art Gallery. Sculptor members of the Society included Henry Moore (1898-1986) and Barbara Hepworth (1903-75). Hodgkins had first shown with the Seven and Five Society in March 1929, when six of her paintings were included in its ninth exhibition. On this occasion the reviewer for The Time. s considered Hodgkins the exhibitor ‘most sure of her ground’; her two oils, Boy in Wood. and The Garden., were both elegant pictures … grotesque, but consistently so, as if the artist obeyed her natural vision of things’. Hodgkins also had two paintings in the Seven and Five Society’s tenth exhibition in 1931, and in the eleventh the following year she had six, one of which was In Cornwall. She also exhibited in three other London dealer galleries in 1932; Zwemmer Gallery, Tooth’s and Wertheim Gallery.

By April 1932 Hodgkins was feeling more financially secure, especially so when the co-director of the Lefevre Galleries in London took her to lunch and offered her a new year-long contract with an annual income of £200 and the probability of renewal. The agreement would be renewed in July 1938, but was cancelled in November the following year because of the outbreak of war. As noted by Iain Buchanan, while a salary of £200 in 1932 was by no means lavish, it was a reasonable sum for an artist at that time, especially so as contemporary art was difficult to sell and economic conditions were uncertain. As Hodgkins herself commented on her change of fortune with her securing the contract: ‘Funny how these favours come thick & fast when you are established in safety’.

Later in 1932, Dorothy Selby, who had contacted Hodgkins back in 1923 requesting lessons, visited her at Bodinnick-by-Fowey. They spent time with other friends, including Hannah Ritchie and Jane Saunders, in Bridgnorth, an old market town on the Severn, in Shropshire, where Hodgkins had conducted successful summer painting classes in mid-1926. The combination of the season and the company provided the stimulus for a number of works from this period. As described by Joanne Drayton, they showed the influence of French artists, the ‘shimmering playfulness and hot piquancy that is more reminiscent of Raoul Dufy than of the British avant-garde’. These works included several inspired by the pleasure boat section of the river Severn, among them Sabrina’s Garden. (Sabrina being the Roman goddess of the river) and Pleasure Boat.. The latter, along with Boathouse on the Severn. and The Two Canoes, was among the 32 works in Hodgkins’s ‘New Watercolour Drawings’ exhibition at the Lefevre Galleries in October/November 1933. The exhibition also included the 1932 watercolour Pleasure Garden., which was the subject of much controversy in 1948 when it was one of six paintings by Hodgkins sent from London on approval to the Canterbury Society of Arts in Christchurch. When the Society decided against making a purchase, a group of citizens subscribed funds and bought Pleasure Garden. for the collection of the city’s Robert McDougall Art Gallery. Debate raged when the City Council declined to accept the offer, and finally, in 1951, when the art gallery’s advisory board was more sympathetic towards modern art, it voted to accept the painting.

The eponymous vessel in Blue Barge . dominates the right-hand side of this composition, with a glimpse of the River Severn and a cluster of tall and closely packed houses and hills beyond. A distinguishing feature of this watercolour is the artist’s change of perspective; whereas the barge itself is depicted obliquely, from the front, a pair of canoes on the river are seen from directly above, as in a bird’s-eye view. In this rare ‘nocturne’ the blue of the barge is mirrored by patches of evening sky, and there are also areas of red, but otherwise the predominant colour is the glistening night time grey of the river and the distant hills. This painting bears certain strong similarities to the 1933 watercolour and gouache Pleasure Boats., the focus of both being watercraft which occupy the lower two-thirds of the compositions. Beyond the vessels in Blue Barge. can be seen the narrow and steeply-roofed houses of Bridgnorth captured here in an economic and impressionistic manner.

Written by Jonathan Gooderham & Grace Alty

To Karl Hagedorn, 29 January 1933. Hotel Balear, Ibiza, Balearic Islands, Spain.

I must say, in this clear ivory light every common object looks important and significant ….things appear in stark simplicity minus all detail – nothing corked up (bouchée) or hidden in grey, or brown light of the North. Of course, later on, this intense sun light will convert colour & form into absolute negation but at the moment there is complete lovlieness. The pale coloured flat roofed houses without windows give a blind restful feeling, of immense space.

Rée Gorer, mother of social anthropologist Geoffrey Gorer, became a great patron of Hodgkins’ work, and it was her purchase of a painting that enabled the artist in late 1932 to escape the British winter and fund the last of her long continental journeys, south to Ibiza in the Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean. Following the establishment of a tourist trade and the opening of the first hotels in the 1930s, Ibiza became increasingly popular with artists, writers and architects who came to study its indigenous building tradition.

Hodgkins was in Ibiza from October 1932 until the following July, meeting up with English artist Gwen Knight and New Zealander May Smith. She painted a large number of images of the town’s architecture and the local animals, observing a special breed of long-legged dog, as well as mules, horses, asses, cats and ‘caged birds by the dozen’.

To Karl Hagedorn, 3 January 1933. Hotel Balear, Ibiza, Balearic Islands, Spain.

The show is the thing – I must set London talking – they expect it of me – my Dealers - & it is a rotten bad thought to fill one’s mind – but down here I forget all about it & think only of the jolly things I see round me and the awful urge to get at them…

By early May 1933 Hodgkins was feeling the pressure of her work, and ‘straining’ to complete a commission, she sought temporary respite by travelling to the other side of the island of Ibiza. In a letter to her friend Dorothy Selby she suggested she lived ‘too close to [her] work’, while her accommodation was far from ideal she lived and painted in a ‘smallish badly lit room’. At that stage spare rooms were unobtainable in Ibiza on account of the influx of Jewish refugees from Germany. Hodgkins was observing developments that would be of increasing international concern as the decade progressed, reporting a ‘war scare’ and, among other things, a ‘tightening up of passports.’

The 1933 watercolour Ibiza was painted from an elevated viewpoint. It shows the town dominated by the Puig des Moulins (Hill of Windmills), while one such structure, prominent on the right, appears to have had its sails ‘deconstructed’ and thereby been reduced to essential elements, much as Hodgkins did with other subjects. Elsewhere, old stone buildings appear in outline only, reflecting the intense Mediterranean sunlight, while foreground vegetation is reduced to calligraphic squiggles. This liveliness of the scene continues overhead, where the sky is captured economically as a series of slashes of bright blue pigment.

Because of the various pressures she was experiencing at Ibiza, Hodgkins decided to postpone her next exhibition in London, planned for the spring, until autumn. Works produced on the spot on the island were eventually included in New Watercolour Drawings, in October-November 1933. This was her first solo exhibition with the Lefevre Gallery, which she shared with Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson.

_
Written by Richard Wolfe
Research by Jonathan Gooderham

From Frances Hodgkins to Dorothy Selby, 29th January 1933, Hotel Balear, Ibiza, Balearic Islands Spain

“Winds high & cold – ships in Harbour – seas rough. But all the time more & more almond blossom on the trees refusing to hold back for all the dirty looks from the sky. But we have ridden the storm and now for some nice weather & warmth. I have got off a batch of work to Lefevres.“

When Frances Hodgkins visited Morocco in 1902, she fell in love with the traditional architecture of cube-shaped houses, their smooth whitewashed walls perforated by dark rectangles of glass; the balconies sometimes decorated with finely traced filigree. Like so many modernist artists, their designs were to serve as important anchor points in many of her European compositions. Such buildings are vernacular, often constructed without plans, yet perfectly suited to the strong contrasts of climate that the Mediterranean provides.

When she visited Ibiza in 1932, wintering over until nearly mid-1933, these kinds of structures delighted her eye once more. During her time on the island, German Dada artist and photographer Raoul Hausmann was photographing the same buildings, providing evidence of how true to form Hodgkins’ depictions are.

The island of Ibiza is a land of contrasts. Ibiza township, where Hodgkins spent most of her time, rises from the harbour to the fortified citadel of Dalt Vila, its ramparts towering over the simple fishermen’s houses of Sa Penya below. At the end of January 1933, Hodgkins wrote to her friend Dorothy Selby, “Work with me has been at a standstill while freak weather did its worst - we all went down with Flue - one after the other - but are now better and up and doing - but no painting yet - winds high and cold - ships in Harbour - seas rough - but all the time more and more almond blossom on the trees - refusing to hold back for all the dirty looks from the sky - But we have ridden the storm ...” Yet Storm (Ibiza) suggests she had hardly waited for the weather conditions abated to strike out for higher ground. This entailed climbing the steep path, lined with irregular ankle-breaking rocks to the great gates of Dalt Vila, and passing through the citadel before striking out along the ridge known as Puig des Molins (Hill of Windmills). Even today the path is rough and stony, and it would have been extremely uncomfortable traversing the ridge in stormy weather with little shelter available.

Hodgkins has carefully considered every element included in Storm (Ibiza). The delicate sails of the mills are long gone, but she captures their towers with their domed roofs, monolithic against the darkening sky. As befitting the chilly temperatures of Spring, the artist has reduced her palette. The yellow ochre tree, its bare branches highlighted by the whitewashed wall behind, complements the rich blues of the shuttered window, while patinated clumps of what appear to be the kind of brushy scrub that seems to thrive in that hostile setting, set off by the washes of brown that indicate the path. Small dabs of orange ochre, almost unnoticed at first, surround a greenish bush, its leaves demarcated in a darker tone, gestural marks rather than botanical renderings. Rather than paint the sweeping bay beyond, a soft greenish grey swirl of water suffices, encircling the promontory in the distance. Ominous dark clouds scud above the harbour, the patches of light indicating that this is a late afternoon work — one which Hodgkins must finish rapidly if she is to cover the kilometre or so of open pathway before reaching the shelter of the citadel’s walls. Hodgkins was always stalwart, and never more so in an environment like this. She loved it, returning several times to paint the Puig, but never in such inclement weather.

In May, by which time she was dating her letters in Spanish, Hodgkins wrote again to Dorothy Selby, noting that Geoffrey Gorer and his mother Rée were in Madrid and might well visit the island. We have no proof that they did, but they acquired Storm – Ibiza II from Lefevre Galleries when displayed there from October to November that year, suggesting that the work may have proved a happy reminder of a brief visit to the island.

_
Written by Mary Kisler

From Frances Hodgkins to Karl Hagedorn, 29th January 1933, Ibiza, Balearic Islands Spain

“… I must say in this clear ivory light every common object looks important & significant - I wonder what you would make of subjects here - things appear in stark simplicity minus all detail - nothing corked up (bouchée) Or hidden as in grey, or brown light of the North. Of course, later on, this intense sunlight will convert colour & form into absolute negation but at the moment there is complete loveliness. The pale coloured flat roofed houses without windows give a blind restful feeling, of immense space.”

Frances Hodgkins arrived in Ibiza, Spain, in December 1932, remaining on the island for over six months. Once temperatures improved, Hodgkins regularly climbed to the walled citadel of Dalt Vila that towers over the township below. From this vantage point she had numerous views on hand, and equally importantly, the advantage of solitude, allowing her to concentrate on her work.

A favoured location was a rough path that led away from the citadel along the ridge overlooking the sweeping bay of Figueretas. As well as making studies of the windmills that lined the path, she pushed further afield, discovering a narrow set of precipitous steps leading towards the water, with little houses clinging to the hillside either side. She painted the lowest house on at least three occasions, focusing on the walled courtyard at the front. Each was painted from a different angle.

In Courtyard, Ibiza (FH1026, University of Auckland) Hodgkins paints a bird in a cage, basking in the sun, while in Ibiza, Balearic Islands (FH1018, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa), a cat stalks along the wall nearest the sea, animating the scene. The same courtyard is referred to in the present watercolour Terrace Garden, Ibiza 1933, but Hodgkins has moved down a step or two so that the end wall stands out against the water. It is both a subtle and masterful composition in which nothing is left to chance. The diagonals of the wall and its crenelated outcrop is mirrored by the ochre wall of the house, while the undulating line of roof tiles on the roof’s edge leads our eye across the sweeping shoreline to the line of hills beyond, punctuated by the waving verticals of a tree whose branches stand out against the sky. The rocky shoreline around the peninsula of Ibiza is covered with prickly pears and aloes that thrive in its salty environment. While it is impossible to identify the plants Hodgkins has painted, she translates their forms into a series of fluid, rapidly painted lines against the ochre dabs of the rocky wall.

In February 1934, two months after her major exhibition had concluded, Hodgkins was invited by Duncan Macdonald of Lefevre Galleries to lunch with the famous writer Rebecca West, the purchaser of Terrace Garden, Ibiza. Hodgkins replied, “... It sounds most terribly attractive meeting Rebecca West... – but I simply cannot promise to coming, feeling as I do at my very lowest ebb of intelligence...” Although reluctant, she almost certainly succumbed, and West later acquired a second watercolour, Bradford-on-Tone c.1937.

West’s married name was Cicily Andrews, née Fairfield, but she is more generally known by her publishing name of Rebecca West. She was the mother of Anthony West, who with his wife Kitty West, were influential supporters of Frances Hodgkins, and were depicted in Hodgkins’ painting Double Portrait No. 2 (Katharine and Anthony West)(FH1119) held in the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa collection.

_
Written by Mary Kisler

To Karl Hagedorn, 29 January 1933. Hotel Balear, Ibiza, Balearic Islands, Spain.

It seems hard to remember that I recently lived in the Lambolle Road. [Hampstead, London, NW3] so completely do I feel absorbed into this setting – the one thing calculated to bring me down to reality is rent day …

By mid-July 1933 Hodgkins was back in her Lambolle Road studio, in London, and among the watercolours painted whilst she was in Ibiza was Figures in a Mediterranean landscape. The first owner of this painting was Bradford businessman Charles Rutherston (aka Rothenstein), older brother of artist Sir William Rothenstein, who was a keen collector and supporter of the arts and played a key role in the careers of such leading English artists as Gwen and Augustus John, Paul Nash and Henry Moore.

In certain respects Figures in a Mediterranean landscape is similar to another of Hodgkins’ watercolours from 1933, Spanish Woman Washing in the Garden. A tree separates the two figures in the Mediterranean landscape, whereas the Spanish woman is framed by a pair of trees which merge to form an arch. The latter individual also bears a resemblance to one of the figures in the Mediterranean landscape. Both paintings were executed with Hodgkins’ usual fluidity, with the elements only loosely connected to one another, and include the geometric white forms of the local vernacular architecture.

Although one figure dominates the other in the Mediterranean landscape, the painting is one of a number of Hodgkins’ double (and triple) portraits produced between the early 1920s and the late 1930s. Compared to an earlier (1930) oil, The Bridesmaids (collection of Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki), the Mediterranean pair are described with much less detail, although there is still sufficient to indicate that they are locals, and the larger figure’s grasp on the central tree suggests a strong connection to the region. Elsewhere, the scattering of small tree motifs across the composition is suggestive of a patterned textile.

In the years prior to Figures in a Mediterranean landscape, Hodgkins had been receiving positive responses to her work when shown at various venues in London. In May 1928 she was included, along with John Nash, William Roberts, Ukraine-born British artist Bernard Meninsky and others, in an exhibition of watercolours at the St. George’s Gallery in Hanover Square, London. A reviewer noted that the use of that medium to ‘capture light while defining structure and configuration with the minimum of labour and material’ was a relatively recent development, and referred to Hodgkins’ Mother and Child as one of several watercolours of ‘remarkable ability’.

In March 1929, when included with Winifred Nicholson and Christopher Wood in an exhibition of the Seven and Five Society at Tooth’s gallery, New Bond Street, Hodgkins was identified as the artist who was ‘most sure of her ground’.

A year later, when she exhibited oil paintings and watercolours at the Claridge Gallery in Brook Street, Hodgkins was described as ‘primarily a colourist’ and likened to Cézanne, engaged in trying to ‘make of Impressionism something of the old masters’. And she also received a positive review to her November 1929 exhibition at the Bloomsbury Gallery:

The paintings by Miss Frances Hodgkins … have a freakish character that is so evidently constitutional that it becomes an added attraction … Miss Hodgkins is an admirable colourist, bold and at the same time subtle in her arrangements, and her system of painting is a sort of free translation of natural forms so as to bring different objects into the same category for the purposes of design.

Figures in a Mediterranean landscape can be seen as a celebration of youthful innocence and vitality, the latter reinforced by the inclusion of the central plant motif. And while the dominant foreground figure echoes Hodgkins’ earlier portraits, as of young Maori, the inclusion of an impressionistic background now hints at the combinations of figures (and still lifes) and landscape that would follow.

_
Written by Richard Wolfe
Research by Jonathan Gooderham

It is most likely that this painting, depicting a country house and landscape, was completed in the early-mid 1930s. Hodgkins’ distinctive combination of pinks and greens in this painting is highly characteristic of her unique and ‘different palette’ that she used during this period. It is probable that the scene depicted is one of a series of paintings that Hodgkins completed of Geoffrey Gorer’s cottage in Bradford-on-Tone, Somerset. Hodgkins returned regularly to Gorer’s cottage after she met him in the late 1920s.

The painting clearly shows the development of her style in the twenties - ‘The naturalistic content of her work is still present, but the picture surface is more important than an illusion of atmosphere and space.’ The landscape has been completely flattened and divided into clear segments of contrasting colour. The large tufts of grass, curving trees and small gates combine to produce a semi-abstract pattern, and heighten the sense of spatial ambiguity. The success of the painting lies in Hodgkins’ mastery of subtle tones and gestural line, which unifies the composition and provides an inviting, harmonious aspect.

In a letter to Duncan MacDonald in 1934, Hodgkins wrote of her method of painting while staying at the Gorer cottage, as a combination of the natural and the imagined, stating, ‘I go out into the fields every day, among the red cattle, strike an attitude and paint a composite picture – a sort of wish fulfilment of a picture.’

_
Written by Jonathan Gooderham

From Frances Hodgkins to Dorothy Selby, 10 Jan 1933, Hotel Balear, Ibiza

‘I am still reacting pleasantly to Ibiza in the painting way and find heaps to do. All very lovely. I can hardly believe it. Weather much colder but fine today. Houses very cold & we seek bed or café in evenings to keep warm’.

Rée Gorer, mother of social anthropologist Geoffrey Gorer, became a great admirer and patron of Frances Hodgkins’ work, and it was her purchase of a painting that enabled Hodgkins in late 1932 to fund the last of her long continental journeys, south to Ibiza in the Balearic Islands, to escape the bleak British winter.

Hodgkins was in Ibiza from October 1932 until the following July, meeting up with English artist Gwen Knight and New Zealander May Smith. Ibiza and Tossa de Mar, on the Costa Brava, were initially suggested as excellent venues for subject matter by Karl Hagedorn and his wife. Hodgkins enjoyed the island’s balmy climate, as well as its culture and history. Seeking not only new subject matter, but a more comfortable climate, she started work on a substantial new body of paintings to be shown at her first solo exhibition with Lefevre Gallery.

Hodgkins responded to the islands clear ivory light writing,‘… things appear in stark simplicity minus all the detail – nothing corked up (bouchée) or hidden as in grey, or brown light of the North. Of course, later on, this intense sun light will convert colour & form into absolute negation but at the moment there is complete lovlieness. The pale coloured flat roofed houses without windows give a blind restful feeling, of immense space’.1

Traditional Ibizan houses were to prove a great source of inspiration for Hodgkins. The present painting, Ibiza, is comparable to two other works, Terrace Garden, Ibiza 1933 (Private collection) and Landscape, Ibiza c.1933 (Private collection). Preferring to work out of doors, Hodgkins would paint in the early morning or late afternoon, often setting herself up at a vantage point on Dalt Vila, Ibiza’s fortified old town.

Hodgkins was forced to postpone the exhibition at Lefevre when the pressure to produce enough works on time became too great. Her Ibiza works were eventually included in New Watercolour Drawings, in October- November 1933. The inscription on the present work, however, makes it unlikely that it was included in the 1933 exhibition. Instead, it was gifted some twelve months later to the young British artist, Eve Disher. Disher was in Cedric Morris’ circle and involved with the wider Bloomsbury set. She was also rumoured to be romantically involved with Morris’ friend Arthur Elton. Hodgkins wrote on several occasions to Lucy Wertheim about Eve and her work, suggesting that Wertheim should add her to her stable of ‘Young Masters’ at the later renamed Wertheim Gallery.

1. Letter to Duncan Macdonald from West Mills, Wareham, Dorset, 24 June [1936], E.H. McCormick Research Library, Auckland Library, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Ta¯ maki, Frances Hodgkins’ Letters Transcripts 1875-1946, RC 2001/25.

_
Written by Jonathan Gooderham & Grace Alty
We are grateful to Dr Pamela Gerrish Nunn for her assistance in compiling the catalogue entries.