The development of her own career was singularly important to Hodgkins. She extended her practice and continued her study in France by enrolling in Penzance-based artist Norman Garstin’s sketching classes. During their association Garstin introduced Hodgkins to a number of leading British artists, including Stanhope Forbes and Lamorna Birch. It is during this period that she also formed a close friendship with fellow New Zealand artist Dorothy Kate Richmond. After arriving in the artist’s colony of Dinan, Brittany, she wrote to her mother:

‘I found Miss Richmond already installed when I arrived and winning all hearts by her sweetness & beauty ... I am a lucky beggar to have her for a travelling companion. She is so restful & sweet and I think we suit each other well’.

They travelled together in Europe on many occasions, painting together in France and Italy. On their return to New Zealand in 1906, they set up a studio in Bowen Street, Wellington where they exhibited 80 of their European paintings together.

In order to appreciate the importance of the relationships she formed with some of the artists featured in this exhibition one has only to look at the significant body of portraits of friends and benefactors in Hodgkins’ oeuvre. There are two paintings by Elsie Barling in this exhibition and the close relationship between Hodgkins and her former students who later became lifelong friends is borne out by the eloquent drawing of Barling (Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Ta ̄maki). Drawn whilst Hodgkins, Barling and Dorothy Selby were staying in a cottage in Sussex in 1929, the portrait captures Elsie as she descended a staircase. Hodgkins later gave the portrait to Selby as a Christmas present in 1931, inscribing on the mount “Of a friend to a friend by a friend”.

Hodgkins also painted two outstanding ‘double’ portraits of friends and supporters Hannah Ritchie & Jane Saunders and Katharine & Anthony West. Ritchie and Saunders, both students of Hodgkins since 1911 and 1912, drew her into their milieu of influential literary and artistic friends in Manchester. Their network included Forrest Hewit, chairman of the Calico Printers’ Association, who helped her secure a job as a designer on a salary of £500 a year. The double portrait of Hannah Ritchie and Jane Saunders (Hocken Library, Dunedin) was commenced in Manchester in 1922 and finally finished and presented to her friends three years later.

Two of Hodgkins’ closest friends & benefactors later in life were Katharine and Anthony West. Frances stayed with the Wests on their farm on several occasions and in the autumn of 1941 recuperating there after surgery and they continued to send Hodgkins food parcels during the war years. Double Portrait No. 2, (Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa) features the couple, painted from previous sketches made at Chisbury Manor in 1939.3 Katharine West was a well exhibited painter and several of her own paintings appear in this exhibition under her maiden name Katharine Church.

One of the more significant relationships to form over the course of her life was with artist and art critic John Piper and his wife, the writer Myfanwy Evans. Frances wrote to them in May 1940 ‘... I was made so very happy by what you & John wrote about me and I owe you very particular thanks. It gave to my show all the success I could hope for it ... Goodness & Beauty must persist dear Myfanwy & Love is the keynote. When shall we meet again? Soon I hope - All my love Frances’.

Piper often reviewed Hodgkins exhibitions and Myfanwy was commissioned by Sir Kenneth Clark to write on her career for the Penguin Modern Painters series

One of the longest and perhaps greatest friendships in Hodgkins time in England was with potter, Amy Krauss, who had first studied under Hodgkins in St Ives in 1915. When Hodgkins was living in ‘an old stone barn’ in Burford in 1923 she invited Amy to come to Burford with a crate of pottery and her wheel and found her a shop in the village in which to sell her pottery. Hodgkins described Amy thus, ‘everyone likes her – she is a downright good sort & extremely capable – both as a painter & potter. Earns her living like all of us’.

Later, in 1936 once again searching for new pastures in Dorset, Frances stayed for a few weeks at Amy’s home Redlane Cottage in East Street, Corfe Castle. Returning again in May 1936 after her trip to Spain, Frances wrote to Duncan Macdonald that she was looking for ‘a quiet corner where I can chrystallize the afterglow of my Spanish memories – before they grow dim’.6 Staying at Amy’s cottage in East St and working out of her rented disused Wesleyan Chapel studio in West St, conveniently just a short walk through the village allotments cutting through a narrow passage into West street just behind her studio.

Amy played a pivotal role in Hodgkins’ life. It was Amy who picked her up from the West’s farm after her recuperation from surgery in August 1941 and cared for her at Redlane Cottage until she was fit enough to return to her own cottage and studio in West Street, Corfe Castle. It was Amy who drove her up to London on the closing day of her final exhibition, the Retrospective at Lefevre Gallery in 1946. They were escorted around the gallery by Duncan Macdonald and by chance met Jane Saunders who was also visiting the exhibition. Amy’s final act of their enduring friendship was to arrange the return of Frances’ ashes to her family in New Zealand after her funeral in Dorset in 1947.

In this small catalogue it is impossible to mention all of the artists, friends, supporters and gallery owners who cherished and supported Frances Hodgkins. This exhibition brings together a series of works dating from 1888 to 1987 and while the exhibition focusses on the relationship between Hodgkins and her circle of friends and fellow artists, it also acknowledges the outstanding career of a number of prominent 20th century New Zealand and British artists. Upon their return to Aotearoa with fresh ideology and overseas experience, the influence of her students Dorothy Kate Richmond, Gwen Knight, Edith Collier and Flora Scales, to name but a few, cannot be underestimated. Their skill and particularly their ability to teach European Modernism and illustrate these ideas in their works had a profound effect on the development of New Zealand art in the 20th Century.

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Written by Jonathan Gooderham

From Frances Hodgkins to Lucy Wertheim, 8th Aug 1930; Flatford Mill, E. Bergholt, Suffolk.

"So very glad to hear all about your latest news. Lett came during the day & I read most of it to him. He was also very pleased that things are going so well, & about Matthew Smith’s interest. He said he had read & filed your letter wh. I had passed on & approved of what you are doing he thought it was all sound sense & good business. He is quite his old self again & his plumage smoothed down.You two mustn’t ruffle up again! ... Lett thinks that if you were to give him a small weekly fee he would write articles & get in all sorts of useful & tactful paragraphs. He has rich friends & is a smart fellow & has a lucky touch and is well liked & thought of. Personally speaking I should say his help would be invaluable & we all agree about it"

Arthur Lett-Haines was born in Paddington, London in 1894. Known primarily as a surrealist artist he worked in a range of mediums including painting and sculpture. He dedicated most of his life to promoting the artistic careers of those around him. Lett-Haines attended St Paul’s School in London and went on to study agriculture at the age of 16. At the outbreak of World War I he enlisted with the British Army and served as an officer in the Royal Field Artillery. During the war years he met and married Gertrude Aimee Lincoln, reputed to be the grand-daughter of President Abraham Lincoln.

After the war Lett-Haines became involved with an artistic group based in Chelsea, London, which included among its members D H Lawrence and the Sitwells. He often threw lavish parties, attracting local artists and writers such as New Zealand writer Katherine Mansfield. In 1918 during one of these parties, he met artist Cedric Morris. Morris quickly moved in with Lett-Haines and his wife in Wilmington, Sussex, resulting in the separation of the couple with Gertrude returning to America the following year. They continued to live together as a couple for some sixty years.

In 1918 Lett-Haines and Morris met artist Frances Hodgkins and a close friendship soon blossomed. Morris and Lett- Haines visited her studio in Kensington where they found the walls full of coloured paintings. In 1919, they moved to Newlyn to attend the Newlyn School. The friendship among the trio is evident in the string of portraits they made of one another. A drawing of Hodgkins by Lett-Haines from 1919 is currently held at the National Portrait Gallery in London and Hodgkins’ 1920 portrait of Lett-Haines (FH0665) is held in the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. Her portrait of Cedric Morris is held in the Towner Art Gallery, U.K. (bequeathed by Lucy Wertheim). Hodgkins was a great influence on Lett-Haines, encouraging him to paint in oil and experiment in post-impressionism.

In 1920 Lett-Haines and Morris moved to Paris where they became involved with a group of expatriate artists including Juan Gris, Marcel Duchamp and Ernest Hemingway. During this time, Lett-Haines studied sculpture at the Académie Colarossi, Paris. New Zealand artists Sydney Lough Thompson and Helen Stewart were also students at the academy.In 1926 Lett-Haines was the only British artist to be shown at the International Exhibition of Modern Art at the Brooklyn Museum, New York. He was described by collector Katherine Dreier as “the only Englishman showing understanding of what the Modernists claim as their point of view.” Following this exhibition, Lett-Haines and Morris moved back to London before settling in Suffolk in 1929.

In 1937 Lett-Haines and Morris founded the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing in Dedham. The school was short-lived as the building burnt down in 1939. They moved to a temporary location but soon settled in Hadleigh in a house named Benton End. Locals regarded this property as the“Art House”. His time in the garden at Benton End was a great influence on his works and many of his paintings followed a surrealist nature, featuring human bodies. Lett-Haines died in 1978, forcing the school to close. Morris continued to live in their home until his death in 1982. The couple are buried near each other at Hadleigh Cemetery. A retrospective exhibition was held at Redfern Gallery for both Morris and Lett-Haines titled Teaching Art and Life in 1984. Lett-Haines’ work can be found in the collection of the Tate Gallery, London, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington, and private collections throughout Britain, Europe and New Zealand.

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Written by Kaitlin Stewart

In a letter from Frances Hodgkins to Lucy Wertheim on August 4th 1930 she wrote:

“We unanimously agreed to ask you as a great favour to reconsider the name of “Young Masters” & call yr gallery simply The Wertheim Gallery. To begin with yr main planks & supports (say Cedric – Matthew Smith Kit Wood – A Robinson?) ... These men do know what they are talking about. It is their world you know.”

Christopher Wood was born in Knowsley, near Liverpool, on April 7th 1901. He attended the Marlborough College in Wiltshire, and went on to study medicine and architecture at Liverpool University in 1919. While at University, Wood met Welsh painter Augustus John who encouraged him to become an artist.

Upon his decision to pursue an artistic career he met French collector Alphonse Kahn, who invited him to Paris where he enrolled at the Académie Julian in 1921. He became involved with a wealthy Chilean diplomat, Tony Gandarillas. Gandarillas not only supported Wood financially but introduced him to artists Pablo Picasso, Georges Auric and Jean Cocteau who became great influences on Wood. The drug opium was being widely used by artists in Paris at the time, and the hallucinogenic effect had an impact on the surrealist quality of Wood’s work but came at a cost to his mental wellbeing.

Throughout the early 1920s Wood travelled between Europe and North Africa with Gandarillas. In 1926 Wood became a member of The London Group and in 1927 joined the Seven and Five Society. Frances Hodgkins exhibited with The London Group in 1927 and joined the Seven and Five Society in 1929 after being introduced to the group by artist Cedric Morris. Hodgkins exhibited alongside Wood in the 9th Exhibition of the Seven and Five Society in 1929. It was through this gathering of artists that Wood came into contact with Ben and Winifred Nicholson.

Wood painted with the Nicholsons in Cumberland and Cornwall in 1928.The Cornish seaside made a great impact on Wood which led him to the artist and fisherman Alfred Wallis, who is well known for his naïve technique. His works were dominated by a skewed perspective and disproportionate objects. His time in Cornwall produced many notable works featuring seascapes, fishermen and boathouses. Wood created his own style during his stay in Cornwall. The importance of a figure or character was held at the forefront whilst working within Wallis’ naïve approach. He went on to spend a summer in Brittany, settling in Tréboul before returning to England for upcoming exhibitions.

In April 1929 Wood held a solo exhibition at Tooths Gallery, London, where he met Lucy Wertheim, Hodgkins’ gallerist friend and dealer. Wertheim purchased a work and arranged for an exhibition to be held at her gallery in London the following year. This was Wertheim’s first gallery, set to open in 1930. It was through the help of Hodgkins, Wood, (who was often referred to as‘Kit’) and Cedric Morris that the name of the gallery was established.

In May 1930 Wood exhibited alongside Ben Nicholson at Galerie Bernheim, Paris. This show featured paintings Wood completed during his time in Brittany the previous year. The show was not a great success and this caused his frenzied state as he prepared for the exhibition to open at Wertheim Gallery in October.

In August 1930, Wood met with his mother and sister in Salisbury to show them a selection of paintings for the upcoming exhibition. At this point he was suffering greatly from opium withdrawals which caused him to take his own life. An exhibition following his death was held in Wertheim Gallery in 1931 as well as Lefevre Gallery, London in 1932. In 1938 Wood’s paintings were included in the British pavilion at the Venice Biennale. In the same year a major exhibition was organised by the Redfern Gallery at the New Burlington Galleries, London. In 1948 Lucy Wertheim gifted an oil painting by Christopher Wood titled The Sloop Inn, St Ives to Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Ta ̄maki.This oil painting was completed in 1926 during his time in Cornwall.The work depicts an everyday scene of locals gathering outside a seaside pub. The present drawing held by Jonathan Grant Gallery is the working sketch for the completed canvas.

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Written by Kaitlin Stewart

From Frances Hodgkins to Hannah Ritchie, 8th July 1924; Hotel Belle Vue Montreuil s-mer

“Agnes Drey settled down to work, hard at it, putting paint all over her self. She or I, or both, take the 3 terrier dogs out walks in the evening.Yesterday one killed a chicken, only a little one & she had to pay 4 frcs. Such a scene. Somehow I like her much better in France. She seems more natural & in her proper setting. She speaks easily & loves the people – they also like her.“

Agnes Drey was born in Charlton, Lancashire in 1890. She was the sister of Oscar Raymond Drey, an art and theatre critic who went on to marry artist Anne Estelle Rice. Anne’s sister, Eleanor Emily Rice became a good friend to Drey. In 1918 Anne Estelle Rice met the New Zealand author Katherine Mansfield in Cornwall and painted her portrait which is now held in the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa collection.

Whilst in France in 1924, Drey joined Frances Hodgkins’ summer sketching classes at Montreuil-sur-Mer. She introduced Hodgkins to her brother Raymond and his wife Anne. Whilst attending an afternoon tea party at the Drey home in Withington, Manchester in 1926 Hodgkins met Lucy Wertheim and this introduction prompted a lifelong friendship.Drey painted a portrait of Hodgkins that was displayed inAucklandArt GalleryToi oTa ̄maki’s exhibition Frances Hodgkins: European Journeys held in 2019. Hodgkins gifted Drey a painting titled St Paul du Var (FH0760, Private Collection) in 1924. Raymond Drey was also a supporter of Frances Hodgkins, purchasing two of her works painted in 1942; Dolaucothy Arms (FH1208) and Welsh Emblem (FH1222, Private Collection).

Drey’s first exhibition was in 1934 at the Back Road West Studios in Cornwall which consisted mostly of still lifes and portraits. She was a founding-member of the Penwith Society which was formed in 1949 and based in St Ives, Cornwall. The group included artists Barbara Hepworth, Peter Lanyon and Ben Nicholson.

Drey worked in Studio 2 at Porthmeor Studios throughout the 1950s. The studio was located next door to Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, a British artist who later purchased the present work Woman with Shopping Basket in 1988. Barns-Graham (1912-2004) was part of the St Ives School of artists of the mid-20th century. Willie, as she was known, built up an astonishing collection of works from friends such as Terry Frost, Barbara Hepworth, Patrick Heron, Roger and Rose Hilton, Bernard and Janet Leach, Denis Mitchell, Ben and Kate Nicholson, Breon O’Casey, Alfred Wallis and Agnes Drey. Throughout her career Drey exhibited with the Women’s International Art Club, the Newlyn & St Ives Societies, Lanham’s Gallery and Castle Inn in St Ives. Drey lived in Cornwall permanently from the 1930s until her death in 1957. A memorial exhibition was held for her by the Penwith Gallery.

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Written by Kaitlin Stewart

From Frances Hodgkins to Lucy Wertheim, 3rd Jul 1930; The White Horse Hotel, E. Bergholt, Suffolk

“ I am glad dear little Eve is so satisfactory. She has rare common sense behind that charm. Trust her. Now for Cedric. Thanks again dear Luce.“

Eve Disher was born in London in 1894. She studied at the Hornsey College of Art in Crouch End, London. As the First World War erupted Disher began working for the London Fire Brigade. In 1918 she ran away from home and married the theatre critic of the Evening Standard, Maurice Wilson Disher. He was connected to the Bloomsbury Group, an association of English writers, philosophers and artists. The couple moved into a house in Gordon Square belonging to the Strachey family. Lytton Strachey was a founding member of the Bloomsbury Group who introduced Disher to the well-known writer Virginia Woolf. The marriage soon ended, forcing Disher to move in with artist Vera Cuningham. Cuningham had a great influence on Disher’s works.

Throughout this time Disher travelled extensively through South Africa and Jamaica and in the late 1920s she became involved with filmmaker Arthur Elton. Through Elton, Disher came into contact with British artists Cedric Morris and Duncan Grant. In a letter from Cedric to Arthur Lett-Haines in 1939, he wrote of Eve Disher, who had been asking him to hold portrait classes in London at Carl Thompsons’ studio.

Disher first came into contact with Frances Hodgkins during the 1920s through her good friends Morris and Lett- Haines. Hodgkins had written to Lucy Wertheim on several occasions about Eve and her work, suggesting that Wertheim should add her to her stable of ‘Young Masters’. She mentioned Disher in a letter to Lucy Wertheim, her gallerist, on July 3rd 1930: “I am glad dear little Eve is so satisfactory. She has rare common sense behind that charm. Trust her.” In 1934 Hodgkins gifted Disher a 1933 watercolour titled Ibiza (FH1287) inscribing it “To Eve from Frances Hodgkins 10.10.34”.

Disher is highly regarded for her portrait works. Her technique of using a dry brush to drag and blot gouache across the canvas became a distinguishing feature in her work. A portrait painted by Disher of J.B.S Haldane in 1936 is held at the National Portrait Gallery in London. Disher exhibited with the Society of Women Artists, the Women’s International Art Club and the Matthiesen Gallery in London. In 1987 she held a solo exhibition at the Foyles Art Gallery in London.

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Written by Kaitlin Stewart

From Frances Hodgkins to William Hodgkins, 12th November 1931, 6 Fitzroy St, London WC2

“When did I last write? April? An awful long time ago – I was in France. I stayed there till mid August, more or less in company with Maud & George Burge, who were, owing to bad times, economising (if it was not really so serious some of the richer of one’s friends’ economies would make one laugh) in one of the less fashionable of the Riviera resorts – St Tropez. A famous artists place but now grown pretentious & expensive, tho’ still very lovely.“

Maud Burge (née Williams) was a New Zealand artist who painted primarily in oils and watercolours. Her work was heavily influenced by her studies and travels throughout Europe. Burge was born in Wellington, the third of thirteen children. Her grandfather, Henry Williams, translated the Treaty of Waitangi from English to Te Reo, and his wife Marianne Williams was a pioneering educator within New Zealand. Her other grandfather, William Beetham, painted portraits.

Burge was heavily influenced by the work of New Zealand artist James Nairn, who was renowned for portraits and landscapes painted using the en plein air approach. Around the turn of the century she painted portraits at Charles Frederick Goldie’s studio in Auckland. Under his tutelage Burge painted InaTe Papatahi of the Nga ̄puhi iwi, who was one of Goldie’s earliest models.

In 1909 she married George Aylesford Burge and the couple left New Zealand for Europe soon after. Burge studied in France and was a pupil of English watercolourist Fred Mayer. She spent time painting in locations such as Concarneau, Saint-Tropez, Morocco and Dalmatia depicting beach and market scenes. Burge exhibited with the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts under her maiden name, Williams, from 1883–1906; and then from 1926, under her married name.

Frances Hodgkins most likely met Maud through her sister, Isabel Field, in Wellington. In 1924, Hodgkins described Maud, then living in Montreuil,“as a charming but changeable woman”. Hodgkins painted in the Burges’ garden in Saint-Tropez in 1931 and joined them the following year in Mallorca and Ibiza. Maud accompanied Hodgkins on several painting expeditions in Ibiza along with fellow artists Gwen Knight and May Smith.

In 1937 the Burges returned to New Zealand, settling in Taupo and then later at Cole Street in Masterton. Maud Burge died in 1957 at the age of ninety-two and is buried in Masterton Cemetery. In 1988 an exhibition titled Frances Hodgkins - Maud Burge: Two Expatriates: an Exhibition of Paintings & Drawings was held at the Hawkes Bay Art Gallery.

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Written by Kaitlin Stewart

From Frances Hodgkins to Isabel Field, 12 November 1899, Castle St.

‘Your pictures are splendid! And I am glad to be able to tell you that one is sold. “Tranquill Waters” Dr Roberts bought it. It is simply wonderful to me how much you have improved and to every one else too – you must have been storing it all up and the result is beyond all expectations. I was prepared to be critical but I must confess I could only admire when I saw them’.

Isabel Jane Field (née Hodgkins) (1867-1950) was born in Dunedin, the daughter of painter William Hodgkins and older sister of Frances Hodgkins. Isabel inherited her father’s talents and grew up in a household where a dedicated, almost professional attitude to painting and exhibiting was a normal part of family life.

Isabel accompanied her father on sketching expeditions, received tuition from him and became a successful painter of landscape and still life. The early artistic promise she showed resulted in regular exhibitions from 1884 at the Otago Art Society and Canterbury Society of Arts, which brought her local and national success as a watercolour flower painter and landscapist. From that point she ranked with fellow Canterbury artist Margaret Stoddart in setting the standard for flower paintings. Reviewers competed to praise her ‘rare qualities for drawing and harmonious treatment of colour’(Evening Star).

Marguerites, the watercolour illustrated here, is a beautiful example of Isabel’s work and demonstrates vividly why she was the first of the sisters to become a successful artist. The work attracted great praise in the Lyttleton Times when exhibited at the Otago Art Society’s annual exhibition in 1888.

Later that same year Isabel was included in the New Zealand section of the Centennial Exhibition in Melbourne, setting the seal on a career that flourished until the end of the century. In 1893 she married aspiring politician William Field and took on a busy life in Wellington as wife, mother and society figure. She remained in touch with her younger sister until the end of Frances’life.

From Frances Hodgkins to Isabel Field, 17 April 1899, Castle St..

‘I have had a long letter from Dora Meeson in Paris giving me much valuable information as to ways and means etc. Ways and means will be very costly next year in Paris on account of the Exhibition so she advises me to stay in London till after the rush is over ...’

Dora Coates (née Meeson) (1869-1955) was born in Melbourne on 7 August 1869, the eldest daughter of John Thomas Meeson, headmaster of Hawthorn Grammar School, and Amelia (née Kipling). The Meeson family were constantly on the move between 1876 and 1896, living in London, New Zealand and Melbourne, and Dora was mainly educated at home. The Meeson family were well known to Isabel and Frances Hodgkins in the early 1890s, whilst they were resident in Dunedin. Frances Hodgkins wrote on several occasions about socialising with the Meeson family to her mother, Rachel, and sister, Isabel.

Studying at the Canterbury College School of Art, Meeson began appearing in New Zealand exhibitions in 1890. She studied intermittently at London’s Slade School of Fine Art in 1892-3, at the National Gallery School, Melbourne 1895-6, then in Paris at the Académie Julian 1898-99. Returning to London in 1900, she married fellow artist George Coates in 1903. A move to Chelsea in 1906 saw Meeson resume her involvement with the suffrage movement. Meeson had signed the 1893 suffrage petition in New Zealand and actively campaigned for equality in both Australia and Britain, not least through her persuasive and ground-breaking political cartoons.

She became a founding member of the Women’s Freedom League (Kensington Branch), she was also a member of the Conservative and Unionist Women’s Franchise Association and the Artists’ Suffrage League. In 1912 she was a member of the London-based Australia and NZ Women Voters Committee and during the war was the Australian representative in London of the British Dominions Women’s Suffrage Union. Described as ‘an ardent feminist all her life’ she later became a noted maritime painter and war artist. While her husband served in the Royal Army Medical Corps at Wandsworth Hospital, Dora helped found the Women’s Police Service. In 1919 she became the first Australian woman member of the Royal Institute of Oil Painters./p>

In Meeson’s large body of work produced over six decades, water as a foreground feature was a staple motif, recurring innumerable times. It is seen from Ebb Tide on the Thames 1907 through Weymouth at Night 1912 and Villefranche 1929 to Fishing Boats at Hastings 1932 and Below Tower Bridge 1950. The format in use here is also seen frequently in her work (e.g. London Bridge looking South, 1922-4), using a body of water to offset an architectural volume.

The present work, Pulteney Bridge, Bath, is altogether an eloquent example of how Meeson maintained a career from her beginnings as a twenty year old in Christchurch to the paintings of bombed-out London by an artist in her seventies. Unbothered by theories and isms, she painted scenes laden with interest and associations for a wide public. She continued to exhibit in England, France and Australia and painted until her death in 1955.

From Frances Hodgkins to Isabel Field, 9 June 1893, Cranmore Lodge

‘I went to see Mr Cole’s studio today. I admire his work and his method tremendously but I think compared with Nerli his work is lifeless. What an artist a judicious blending of the two would make! Nerli has been most awfully good to me and gives me an extra lesson on Saturdays in his studio’.

Girolamo Pieri Pecci Ballati Nerli (1860-1926) was an Italian painter born into an aristocratic family in Siena. He studied art under Antonio Ciseri and Giovanni Muzzioli and emigrated to Australia in 1885. After a short stay in Melbourne he moved to Sydney, where he became associated with the Heidelberg School. He travelled to Samoa in 1892 where he painted the portrait of Robert Louis Stevenson.

Nerli first visited Dunedin in 1889 and settled there in 1893. A colourful figure, he became an influential teacher and exhibitor, with Frances Hodgkins and Grace Joel his principal protégées. In 1893 Nerli was elected to the council of the Otago Art Society and in 1894 he set up the Otago Art Academy along with J.D. Perret and L.W. Wilson in Dunedin’s Octagon.

Nerli was a charismatic teacher and his private classes were so popular that the Dunedin School of Art and Design decided to employ him as a teacher of painting. Having no particular specialty, he produced portraits, landscapes and genre compositions in an impressionistic, animated style which was new to Otago artists. He encouraged his students to look beyond the limitations and restraints of New Zealand art to the innovations of Europe. Nerli encouraged Hodgkins to focus on capturing the natural effects of colour and light by sketching en plein air and his influence can clearly be seen in the fluid watercolour handling of her early works.

Nerli combined different trends of European modernism in his works, choosing to focus on everyday subjects and intimate portraits, rather than grand historical themes. The Springtime of Life has its origins in an 1887 picture by Nerli known as In Transgression or Courtship. The painting illustrated here was exhibited under the present title at the Wellington Art Club’s annual exhibition in the winter of 1894 (no. 151) and again at the Otago Art Society in the following November (no. 105). Identified in Wellington variously as ‘an amorous boy and girl followed by some wondering turkeys’(Wellington Evening Post) and‘a goose-girl and her lover’(New Zealand Times), it was suggested by more than one New Zealand reviewer that its narrative beginnings might have lain in the popular French opera of 1880, La mascotte.

Taken altogether, these possibilities of its meaning perhaps overload this essentially anecdotal genre picture. On a simpler level, it is a prime example of Nerli’s roots in the Macchiaioli, the Tuscan painters of modern life who refreshed Italian art in the 1860s and ‘70s by painting out of doors. It exemplifies the technique that impressed New Zealand audiences in the 1890s, leading to him exercising an influence on Dunedin artists that was unri- valled once James Nairn left the southern centre for Wellington.

If Nerli’s sensibilities tended to the risqué, there was no denying his energetic use of paint to create fresh, brisk and animated figure-paintings which was highly invigorating to the art in his adopted country. ‘Signor Nerli’ spent just over three years in Dunedin. In 1897 he left suddenly and headed north, opening a studio in Auckland. After eloping to Christchurch to marry Marie Cecilia Josephine Barron, the couple set sail for Australia. Nerli’s work continued to circulate in this country, being grouped with that of Petrus van der Velden and James Nairn. By 1906, he was back in the land of his birth, and died in Genoa in 1926.

From Dorothy Richmond to Frances Hodgkins, 19 June 1901, Paris, Place du Trocadero

‘Your kind letter to hand last night I at once decided to come to Caudebec if Mr Garstin will have me. I am writing to him this morning. I am looking forward to meeting you with real hoy. I think companionship doubles the pleasure & halves the sorrows of life. Before I left N.Z. I had formed a strong wish to be with you in Paris ... Apart from companionship socially, I feel so very glad at the idea of seeing your painting. Your work is far better than that of any of the teachers I have seen since I came here’.

Dorothy Kate Richmond (1861-1935) was born in Parnell, Auckland, to James Crowe Richmond and Mary Smith. Her father was a talented watercolourist and Dorothy followed his lead, training at the Slade School of Fine Art, London, 1878-80. On her return to Nelson in late 1880, Richmond was one of a small group of New Zealand-born women to have received a professional training in art. She became a member of the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts in 1890, relocating to Wellington in 1894 with her father where she studied under James Nairn in 1896.

Richmond’s father was a close friend and painting companion of William Mathew Hodgkins and in the summer of 1898 she decided to leave New Zealand for Europe with the intention of meeting up with Frances. Richmond was a pivotal force in Hodgkins’ life during this period, introducing her to Irish painter Norman Garstin, whose advice, support and friendship she greatly valued. Both artists joined Garstin’s 1901 summer school at Caudebec and later travelled together to Britain, France, Italy and the Netherlands. Richmond and Hodgkins returned to New Zealand in 1903 and rented a studio in Bowen Street, Wellington, where they taught private pupils. In 1904 they mounted an exhibition of 80 of their European paintings at McGregor Wright Gallery in Lambton Quay. When Hodgkins returned to Europe in early 1906, Richmond kept both the Bowen Street studio and the private pupils.

Richmond became a prominent member of the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts as a teacher and also exhibiting nationally. In this last role she influenced many other artists including Owen Merton. Richmond was greatly admired as a teacher and she continued exhibiting in Wellington, Auckland and Christchurch until 1934.

Seen somewhat stereotypically as a leading flower painter, she is in fact one of New Zealand’s key early twentieth century landscape artists. At Wellington’s annual art exhibition in 1928, her works drew the comment that ‘one of her watercolours among a thousand would be instantly recognised for the subtle beauty of its colour, often suggestive of the interior of pearl shell, and her sure, free and fluent drawing’ (Evening Post). Her apparently effortless renditions of the New Zealand landscape, nearly always in watercolour, show how attractive Naturalism could be, even as Modernism was claiming the headlines.

In selecting the time of day, season and weather in which a scene is at its most beguiling, she made enduringly beautiful paintings. At the same time an accurate likeness of place is delivered with exquisite effect. This makes her landscape watercolours of the 1920s and ‘30s wonderfully evocative for the present-day viewer who may know those scenes that she captured, but are unaware of the generally much more idyllic character they used to have a century ago.

Richmond’s subject illustrated here is one she knew very well, the bays lying on the north-eastern side of Wellington harbour, opposite the city, were a popular leisure spot for locals. This scene was repeated in other works by Richmond, such as Nelson Beach 1927 and Evening, York Bay 1934. The absence of human figures in her compositions indicates the artist’s true calling as a landscapist, inspired by nature rather than society.

From Owen Merton to Frances Hodgkins, 12 April 1911, Ealing W.

‘I only want to say that I am so very delighted with those two water colours in the International. I think they are without any doubt the best work of yours I have seen. The lanterns especially. You are more of a marvell than ever - and I am so very proud of New Zealand and everything ... I am pretty certain to come to Concarneau again later on in the summer. I am only here a week or two and go back to Paris till July’.

Owen Heathcote Grierson Merton (1887-1931) was born in Christchurch and educated at Christ’s College, where he had his first formal art lesson. In 1903 he enrolled at the age of sixteen in the Canterbury College School of Art. After a false start as a bank clerk in 1904, he went to London to live with his aunt and uncle. Though it is unclear what further training he had there, when he returned to New Zealand in 1907 his art had matured markedly. He held solo exhibitions in Wellington where he met and was greatly inspired by Dorothy Kate Richmond.

Returning to Europe in 1909, Merton travelled to various artistic centres, falling in with Frances Hodgkins in Concarneau in 1910, where he enrolled in her sketching class. Based for an extended period in Paris from 1910 to 1913, Merton studied first at the Académie Colarossi, then in the studio of Percyval Tudor-Hart along with fellow New Zealander Maud Sherwood. Merton was a close friend of Hodgkins during this period and helped her prepare her new teaching studio, School for Water Colour, at 21 impasse du Maine in December 1911. He was put to work white-washing walls and later accompanied her to a Christmas Eve party.

Whilst studying in Paris, Merton met Ruth Calvert Jenkins, an American art student whom he married in London in 1914. The couple took refuge from the War in the USA in 1916. From 1917 to 1925 his chief exhibiting outlet was New York. Merton became known as an audacious painter working within the world of New York modernism.

Women were a key influence in Merton’s life and career. From Annie Abbott (later Kelly) who taught him art as a teenager, through to his aunt Maud who housed him as a young man in London; to his American wife Ruth. Perhaps the two greatest influences on his career were Dorothy Kate Richmond and Frances Hodgkins, whose encouragement sent him to Cornwall and later Paris, where his predominantly watercolour art (the favoured medium of the two aforementioned) prospered.

Sailing off Bermuda, dates from Merton’s American period. Perhaps unsurprisingly then, this work has benefited not only from Richmond’s and Hodgkins’ influence, but also from an awareness of the works of John Marin, the foremost modern watercolourist in New York at that time. The painting dates from the winter of 1921-22 which Merton spent in Bermuda. The cursory, almost cheeky abbreviations of form that are so effective here in conveying the breezy conditions (so good for sailing) belie the anxiety under which this drawing must have been made – only a few months earlier Ruth had died of cancer, he had two young sons to rear, and his personal future was profoundly uncertain.

From Frances Hodgkins to Rachel Hodgkins, 7th August 1901, Hotel de France, Caudebec-en-Caux Seine

"Last night I dined with Mr & Mrs Garstin at the Hotel Marine with some English friends of theirs. We all love Mr & Mrs Garstin. Miss Richmond & myself are quite hopelessly in love with the former and both agree we have meet our ideal artist & man at last."

Norman Garstin was born on the 28th of August 1847 in Caherconlish, Ireland. His paintings are associated with the en plein-air approach, with heavy influence from French impressionists such as Édouard Manet. Garstin’s inspiration also hails from Japanese prints and American painters such as James McNeil Whistler.

Garstin attended Victoria College on the island of Jersey, following a passion for architecture and engineering. He ventured abroad and travelled to Cape Town, South Africa where he met Cecil Rhodes and began a career in journalism. Discontent and struck with a desire to pursue a career in art, in 1880 he attended the Royal Academy in Antwerp, Belgium. This compelled a move to Paris where he further studied from 1882 to 1884 in the studio of artist Carolus Duran. During his time in Paris he was associated with Edgar Degas and became keenly interested in French Impressionism. Following his studies, he travelled throughout Europe visiting Spain, Morocco, Venice - and Italy, embarking on the completion of his first professional paintings. Garstin first exhibited in 1883 at the Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin, with the painting ‘Bird’s Nesting’ which had been sent from Paris. He regularly exhibited at the RHA in the following years.

In 1888, he met Louisa Jones whom he married and had three children, all of which pursued a career in the field of journalism and art. They moved to Vernon, Newlyn where Garstin founded his roots in the artistic community. He became a member of the New English Art Club (NEAC) and the Newlyn Society of Artists (NSA). In 1895, he became a founding member of the Newlyn Art Gallery which became an exhibition space for the students at Newlyn School of Arts where he taught. This gallery stands today as a prominent feature in the community of Newlyn.

As an avid traveller he took his students to places in Europe where he found great inspiration earlier in his career. In 1901 and 1902, one of New Zealand’s renowned artists Frances Hodgkin’s joined his Summer sketching classes in France where they formed a great friendship. She proceeded to write of him and his wife in a variety of letters from 1901 to 1914 to her mother Rachel Hodgkin’s and Kate Rattray. In 1902 a transcription of her letter wrote “they are such dear delightful people but I do wish they had a little more of the world’s goods – living on pictures is a dog’s life”. Hodgkin’s spoke very fondly of her teacher Garstin, wishing their family good fortune.

In the very early 1900’s Hodgkins studied beneath Garstin in Normandy, Brittany, Belgium and Holland. By 1909 Hodgkins was holding her own classes in Paris and Montreuil-sur-Mer. Despite working as a pupil of Garstin he acknowledged her solely as a fellow artist. Despite working beneath Garstin he acknowledged her only as a fellow artist. He recognised her talent from the beginning thus refusing to have her as a pupil.

4 July 1901 Hotel de France, Caudebec rn Caux to Rachel Hodgkins:

“Mr Garstin refuses to accept me as a pupil & will not let me pay a penny he seems to think I have nothing to learn which is absurd and any help he gives me he says is merely from one brother artist to another. He wants me to work here for a while then go down to Spain for the winter, get plenty of material there then go back to Penzance & take a studio there for a while & get all my sketches in order & then have a show in London in the Spring. He has promised to write me up in the “Studio”, he writes a lot for that paper & has influence. It is a very attractive programme and the most delightful part of it is that Miss Richmond is coming with me. We are at present studying Spanish guide books and making plans.”

In 1919 Hodgkins and Garstin were both holding painting classes in Ludlow. As seen in the painting above Garstin’s view looks down from Ludlow castle over the bridge to the river below. In July 1919 Hodgkins painted the watercolour Ludlow Castle (FH0633) which shows the reverse view of the very same scene. Hodgkins perspective shows the river bank looking across the bridge up the castle. This work was exhibited in the exhibition Frances Hodgkins and Her Circle in Jonathan Grant Gallery in 2020.

Garstin died on the 22nd of June 1926 in Penzance, Cornwall. An exhibition of his and his daughter Alethea’s work was sponsored by the Penwith Society of Arts and was featured at the National Gallery of Ireland in 1978. His work can be found at the Tate Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum.

From Frances Hodgkins To Rachel Hodgkins, 17 May 1916, 7 Porthmeor Studio, St. Ives

‘Mrs Hughes a Chch artist called on me yesterday. She lives in Newlyn’.

Eleanor Mary Hughes (née Waymouth) (1882-1959) was born in Christchurch where the family home was the celebrated Mona Vale. Her mother Alice encouraged both Eleanor and her sister Biddy to develop their artistic interests. She studied at Canterbury College School of Art and with C.N. Worsley between 1901-03. She exhibited at the Christchurch Society of Arts in 1902 before leaving for England in 1904 to attend the School of Painting and Drawing run by Stanhope Forbes and Elizabeth Forbes in Newlyn.

A brief return home consolidated her New Zealand reputation, but she left again for England in mid 1907 to study at Frank Spenlove’s Yellow Door Studio in London, before returning to Newlyn. She married a fellow Newlyner, Robert Hughes in 1910, and gradually became one of the stalwarts of the Cornish school, specialising in watercolour landscape and later in etching.

The couple designed and built their own home, Chyangweal, near St Buryan and the house became a regular social centre for artists settled in the area. Eleanor Hughes was a skilled pianist and would lead recitals at their home. In Cornwall the couple became lifelong friends with Laura Knight and her husband Harold Knight, who painted their portraits on a number of occasions.

The Cornish landscape and in particular the Lamorna Valley provided inspiration for Hughes’ works. She purchased her own studio and exhibited regularly from 1911 at the Royal Academy and eventually with the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours. Few members of the Cornish schools specialised in watercolour, but its qualities suited Hughes’ vision very well. She delighted in the scenery of her adopted region, West Penwith, and its key characteristics are always recognisable in her landscapes. Hughes became known, along with Lamorna Birch, as the essential illustrators of that area.

Hughes’ signature clarity, delicacy of colouring and draughtsmanship are on full display in the handsome work illustrated here. Craggy Foreshore, Land’s End, Cornwall also displays one of the artist’s favourite views. Although she was equally adept at inland scenes, and especially from 1930 on, gave special attention to trees as visual motifs, Hughes’ forté was her ability to capture the Cornish coast in all its rugged splendour. The present work, of museum quality, has fit companions in public collections such as Cliff near Land’s End, Cornwall, England (Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū) and The deserted mine (Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa).

Hughes sold her studio in 1940 and her output slowed considerably after this. She died in Lamorna in 1959. Eleanor Hughes is to this day recognised as one of the core group of Cornish school artists, whose distinctive style is immediately recognisable.

Julie Heraud 'Maud Sherwood New Zealand Artist 1880 - 1956' (1992)

‘The boats are gorgeous things with orange and brown sails and one I saw was a canary yellow and another almost an emerald green. Just imagine these all clustered together with the sun shining on them’.

Maud Winifred Sherwood (née Kimbell) (1880-1956) was born in Dunedin and moved as a child to Wellington in the early 1890s. She began exhibiting with the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts in 1898 and won a travelling scholarship in 1902. Deferring this opportunity, she chose instead to become a teacher at the Technical College under James Nairn, whose position she assumed on his death in 1904.

Her first solo exhibition opened at the McGregor Wright Art Gallery, Wellington, on 16 April 1910. In late 1911 she left New Zealand and after a brief stay in London went to Paris where she visited artists’studios with Frances Hodgkins. She then studied at the Académie Colarossi, one of the best-known art schools in Paris, where Frances had taught, and soon after moved to Percyval Tudor-Hart’s studio. In the summer of 1912, she toured southern England in a sketching group organised by Tudor-Hart which included fellow expatriates Owen Merton, Cora Wilding and C.Y. Fell.

The following summer Sherwood visited the small fishing port and artist mecca of Concarneau, Brittany. It may well have been recommended to her by Hodgkins, who had spent the summer of 1911 painting in the picturesque fishing village. Whilst staying there Sherwood also met Cantabrian expatriate Sydney Lough Thompson, who was resident in Concarneau during this period.

Sherwood was greatly inspired by the subjects that Concarneau offered which included the marketplace, the locals in their historic vernacular costumes, the apparently ungoverned urchins of the town, the warm beaches and the fishing port.

Fishing Boats at Concarneau reflects the enthusiasm expressed by Sherwood for the small fishing village. Inspiration seemed to abound, and she wrote in her letters home:

Hughes sold her studio in 1940 and her output slowed considerably after this. She died in Lamorna in 1959. Eleanor Hughes is to this day recognised as one of the core group of Cornish school artists, whose distinctive style is immediately recognisable.

‘The boats are gorgeous things with orange and brown sails and one I saw was a canary yellow and another almost an emerald green. Just imagine these all clustered together with the sun shining on them’

The vigour of the present subject matter is cleverly underpinned by the square format chosen by the artist. This painting exemplifies what critics expressed of Sherwood’s work on her return to New Zealand as“her coat-off freedom of treatment”(Evening Post).

Sherwood left Europe in October 1913 and settled in Sydney, where she became a regular exhibitor. An unhappy marriage made in 1917 came to an end in 1922, whereafter she exhibited and travelled extensively. She spent several years working abroad and returned to Australia permanently in 1933.

The work illustrated on the cover of this catalogue, Tea for Two, which has previously also been titled as On the Beach, dates from a period when Sherwood was travelling in the northern hemisphere (1926–1933). More cursory, and thus far more intimate than Hodgkins’ comparable Painting Class on the Beach c.1921-24 and After the Bathe (c.1921-24), the present work merely hints – but how beautifully – at the combination of skill, style and taste that brought Sherwood so much success.

To Hannah Ritchie and Jane Saunders, 1 May 1923, Studio, St. Lawrence’s Street, Burford, Oxon

'Amy Krauss suggests coming for the summer with a crate of Pottery & her wheel & setting up business & teaching – I am finding her a shop front. It will be invigorating for Burford’.

Amy Krauss RWA (1876-1961) was born in Bristol to a German father and an English mother. She studied at the Royal West of England Academy, becoming a founding member of The Clifton Arts Club. Although she is known to admirers of Frances Hodgkins in her later role as a potter, Krauss began her artistic career as a painter in both oils and watercolours.

Krauss exhibited regularly from 1904 until 1914, chiefly landscape paintings. She studied art at the Académie Colarossi, Paris between 1908 and 1913, where it is believed she first met Frances Hodgkins. She returned to Bristol at the outbreak of war and worked as a draftsman for the British and Colonial Aeroplane Company. A clear influence on her aesthetic came from the Scottish colourists Samuel Peploe, J.D. Fergusson and Leslie Hunter, whom she came across while in Paris before the War.

Krauss joined Hodgkins’ sketching class in St Ives in September 1915. The Apple Tree, which was exhibited in 1917 at the Royal West of England Academy is characteristic of Krauss’painterly works. Krauss preferred outdoor scenes, whether in Britain or France. This work indicates clearly how Hodgkins’ loose shaping of forms and reliance on colour influenced Krauss’ watercolours, though it retains the imprint of the French work she would have seen in Paris a few years earlier.

Krauss painted with Hodgkins again at Burford in 1923, by which time, however, she had turned to pottery as her primary medium. Her interest in pottery grew as she collected several‘peasant ware’pieces on her travels abroad. She established her pottery career by first working for Fishley Holland Pottery, Devon, and later sharing a studio with Sibley Pottery, Wareham, Dorset. Finding success in Burford after setting up a small shop selling her pottery in the summer of 1923, Krauss established a permanent studio in a barn on West Street, Corfe Castle. She used locally sourced Wareham clay and grog, firing her pieces in an oil-fired kiln.

Krauss became one of Hodgkins’ closest friends and supporters. Hodgkins often stayed with her at her home, Redlane Cottage in Corfe Castle, and in August 1941 Krauss made the trip to Katharine & Anthony West’s farm to collect Hodgkins after recent surgery. She cared for Hodgkins at her home until she was well enough to return to her studio cottage later that year. Krauss was also instrumental in introducing Hodgkins to Elsie Barling and Dorothy Selby who would remain amongst her closest friends.

Krauss’ first major pottery exhibition was held at Lefevre Galleries, London, in 1925. Beautiful though they are in their small-scale perfection, the pieces illustrated here are not typical of Krauss’ceramic style. From the beginning of her interest in ceramics, in 1918, she tended to a cottage or peasant style, based on an admiration for French and Italian domestic pottery. She was more likely to produce vessels of domestic utility such as bowls, jugs and dishes, as can be seen in the photograph of her at work around 1940. There is a common factor, however, in the small scale, necessitated by the modest working set-up that she established for herself in Corfe Castle.

From Frances Hodgkins to Will Field, 30 March 1918, Wharf Studio, St Ives

‘The other day 3 nice girls, all from N.Z., blew in to the Studio – Miss Denniston of Peel Forest, Barker ditto & Beatrice Wood from Chch, a bright fair haired girl with a fluffy dog in her arms. She wanted me to paint her a sketch of herself for her Dad – Wiliam Wood – which I did! ... She is a masterful young person – of the nice sort, & I would like to adopt her’.

Beatrice Ann Seddon (née Wood) (1889-1987) was born in Christchurch on July 28th 1889, the third child of William Wood and Mary Theresa Loughnan. Seddon was educated at Rangi Ruru Girls’ School, attended a finishing school in England and upon returning to Christchurch attended art school under the tutelage of Sydney Lough Thompson and Margaret Stoddart. She went to London at the outbreak of war where she served as a volunteer Red Cross ambulance driver with the Aotearoa Club at Codford on Salisbury Plain.

Having contracted measles at Codford, Seddon went to St. Ives to recuperate, where she met and befriended Frances Hodgkins. While in St Ives, Hodgkins painted a portrait of Seddon (commissioned by her), titled Portrait of Miss Beatrice Wood, 1918.

Seddon joined Hodgkins’painting classes at Porlock, Somerset and the following summer she organised a class for Hodgkins at Great Barrington in the Cotswolds.

Like Hodgkins, Seddon dedicated herself to the medium of watercolour. Haystacks and Poppies, The Cotswolds clearly illustrates Hodgkins’ influence on her works. Made under Hodgkins’ tutelage in the summer of 1919, when a handful of keen students gathered in Great Barrington, eschewing the village’s obvious motifs of the old church, historic Fox Inn and picturesque stone houses, in favour of the beautiful Cotswold en plein air landscape.

In Haystacks and Poppies Seddon has achieved a pretty yet fresh example of the typically idyllic rural view popular in Britain (and New Zealand) since the mid 19th century. Her rapid touches of pigment in the foreground to indicate the eponymous flowers, contrasting effectively with the broad washes of the sky, show her to be no ordinary amateur, and she remained capable of this effortless charm over the years.

In 1921, Seddon married a son of the former New Zealand Prime Minister Richard Seddon. A frequent exhibitor throughout New Zealand, she was a popular artist and sales of her watercolour landscapes and still lifes supported her family through the depression years. She became well known as an artist and in 1971 she travelled to Norfolk, England to view the exhibition Flower Paintings of the World, where one of her own flower studies had been selected by the National Art Gallery to represent New Zealand.

From Frances Hodgkins to Karl Hagedorn, 6 March 1932, The Nook, Bodinnick-by-Fowey, Cornwall

‘My Dear Karl, I found time, after I saw you, to look in at the “National” to see yr. drawings - and very good they are too - I spotted them at once, well hung & honoured as they should be. The person who can do work like that can do better still given the right mood & place & I see you going far on those lines ... I think you have got onto something very sound - even lovely later on when you decide on letting yourself go’.

Karl Hagedorn RA (1889-1969) was born in Berlin and settled in the northern English city of Manchester in 1905 where he studied textile production and design. Hagedorn became a leading figure in the Manchester art scene, showing regularly at the Society of Modern Painters, exhibiting there from 1913-16, in London at the New English Art Club from 1913 and the Royal Academy from 1931-61.

In pre-war Paris he studied with Maurice Denis at the Académie Ranson, where he acquired a reverence for Henri Matisse and absorbed avant-gardism. On his return to England, Hagedorn made a consciously pioneering attempt to introduce Modernism into Manchester through his work as both painter and designer. He became a British subject in 1914 and served as a Lance Corporal in the Middlesex Regiment during World War I.

Hagedorn met Frances Hodgkins in 1923 in Manchester while she was staying with close friends Hannah Ritchie and Jane Saunders. Hodgkins was appointed a textile designer in 1925 and her burgeoning friendship with Hagedorn inspired a cubist tendency in her work. Hagedorn and Hodgkins remained close friends and supporters of each other for many years, a friendship which resulted in the acquisition by Hagedorn of Hodgkins’ chalk drawing, Cassis Quarry Man & Wife (p.41), painted during her visit to Cassis in 1920. Hagedorn left Manchester and relocated to London in 1927 where Hodgkins visited the artist and his wife at their new home.

Hagedorn worked in a distinctive geometric manner which applied Cubist draughtsmanship to the tradition of the English landscape watercolour. As a visual artist he did not confine himself to fine art or design, but his work encompassed many disciplines. As well as painting, he also made a large amount of work for commercial ends, such as posters, advertisements and letterpress. Identified as ‘Manchester’s first Modernist’, Hagedorn described his work as being‘rhythmical expressions in line and colour’.

All of these attributes can be seen in the present work, Design with Bird Motif, which demonstrates Hagedorn’s clarity of form, his ability to abstract essential elements from natural subjects and his delicate touch. Although the purpose of this design is no longer known (the case with much of his surviving design work, sadly), it uses a distinctive palette that appears in much of Hagedorn’s interwar work.

During his lifetime Hagedorn was considered a controversial Modernist. He was one of the most colourful and original figures on the Manchester art scene in the early decades of the twentieth century. Such is the artful arrangement of decorative forms and appealing colour in his works that it is no surprise that Hagedorn won a Grand Prix at the famous International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts in Paris 1925.

From Frances Hodgkins to Hannah Ritchie, 14th March 1925, 61 Earls Court Square, SW5

‘Did I tell you Miss Barling has 4 good canvases at the W I A C – in fact the best in the show – my private view. She must show in a more modern gallery’.

Elsie Barling (1883-1975) was born in Newnham, Gloucestershire. Following the deaths of her brother and father, the family moved to Kent where she became a school teacher. Barling began an enduring friendship with Frances Hodgkins after being introduced to her by Amy Krauss. Barling later joined Hodgkins’ sketching class in Burford in the summer of 1923, accompanied by her close friend Dorothy Selby.

An occasional exhibitor, Barling had a devotion to painting that was limited by her need for steady employment as an art teacher. She taught at Betteshanger and Bryanston schools and as a teacher was spoken of with great affection and admiration. Full time employment left only school holidays for her own professional development. This meant that she was in many ways more disciplined than artists who were free from external commitments.

In 1927 Barling and Hodgkins visited Tréboul, Brittany and were joined by Dorothy Selby, Hannah Ritchie, Jane Saunders, Cedric Morris and Lett Haines before moving on to Concarneau. While Barling was fourteen years Hodgkins’ junior, the two evidently had a sincere friendship but there is every indication that Barling was her own person when it came to her painting.

Barling exhibited alongside Hodgkins at St George’s Gallery, London in 1928. Hodgkins wrote of the exhibition to Dorothy Selby; ‘The St George’s Gallery has written to ask me for 2 Water Colours to be sent in by the 25th ... hope Barling will be prepared – but then, curse her, she always is’.

The artist’s documented statement that she and Hodgkins often went together to Brittany and southern France does not mean that they painted the same subjects in these locations nor that they adopted a similar style. In locations common to them both (Brittany, Cornwall, Tossa de Mar), it is clear that Barling remained committed to form in a way that Hodgkins did not – a point well illustrated by the present work, A Fishing Port. This work also hints that Barling had paid some attention to the post-war trend in France known as the‘retour à l’ordre’or return to order, which eschewed expressionism of any kind for a sense of structure.

A memorial exhibition of Barling’s work was shown at the Dorset County Museum, Dorchester in 1977.

Gwen Knight (1888-1974) was born in Wellington and lived on The Terrace above Woodward Street, before moving at the age of four to Hunters Hill in Sydney. Knight studied music at the Sydney Conservatorium and went to Europe in 1913 to further her career as a pianist.

It is no exaggeration to say that meeting Frances Hodgkins changed Gwen Knight’s life. She joined Hodgkins, along with fellow New Zealand artist Flora Scales, in St Tropez in 1931. Painting had always been a second love for Knight and through the encouragement of Hodgkins, she decided to pursue her career as a practicing artist.

Knight remained in Hodgkins’ company for the next six years. She accompanied her to Ibiza and Tossa de Mar in 1933, locations suggested to Hodgkins by Karl Hagedorn and his wife, who had stayed there. Hodgkins gifted Knight the watercolour Ibiza, Balearic Islands 1933, inscribing the work ‘to Gwen from Frances Hodgkins 1933’. She also painted two portraits of Knight, Under the Pines 1931 (Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Ta ̄maki), completed in St Tropez, and Gwen 1934 (Private Collection), both works illustrating Hodgkins’ tendency to use close associates and friends as subject matter for her works.

Hodgkins introduced Knight to Hans Hofmann in Munich, who after seeing her work took her on as a pupil. A highly perceptive and sympathetic teacher, Hofmann emphasised the essential discipline of drawing and it is this that Knight always referred to as one of her most important influences. The artistic atmosphere of Europe in the twenties and thirties, enhanced by the long and happy friendship with Hodgkins, had a profound effect on Knight’s work. Her chief interest became landscape painting, informed not only by Hodgkins’ example (in the use of gouache), but also by the teachings of Parisian artists André Lhote and Roger Bissière under whom she studied.

Knight returned to New Zealand in 1948, where she became a key member of the Wellington art scene. She developed her own individual style; quiet and meditative, with restrained rhythmic colours and closely knit toning.

Knight’s gouaches brim with the spirit of the Mediterranean setting of her friendship with Hodgkins. In The Goldfish Pond, a refined joie de vivre is evoked by the celebration of sunlight, nature, and the magical moments which everyday life can offer the observant eye. Lhote’s training is also reflected in Knight’s quiet and meditative style. The point of view within the composition allows the picture plane to spread out before the viewer. The playful inclusion of as many pots of flowers as the design can accommodate and the lyrical play of sunlight bringing out the reflection in the pool, all evoke Knight’s skill as an artist.

Helen Flora Victoria Scales (1887-1985) was born in Lower Hutt, Wellington. Her father encouraged her artistic talent, taking her to London in 1908 for four years training at William Frank Calderon’s School of Animal Painting. Her study concluded with the hanging of one of her works in the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1911.

After her return to New Zealand, Scales joined the Academy Studio Club in 1914 and became a regular exhibitor at the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts from 1906. She became identified in the New Zealand gallery-goer’s mind with animal painting (firstly) and modern landscape (later in life), the kind of subject matter seen in the work illustrated here.

The popularity in Wellington of works such as this – watercolour on a modest scale depicting local scenery – was due in large part to the local influence of Dorothy Kate Richmond. Scales’ work, however, derives from quite a different art training and could not be mistaken for that of Richmond’s. The specificity of this watercolour’s content suggests a commission, though the circumstances of its production are today unknown.

In 1928 a bequest from her father enabled the artist to return to Europe, where she studied in Paris at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. Scales first met Frances Hodgkins in Paris and later joined her in St Tropez in 1931, along with Gwen Knight, on a sketching trip. Knight urged Scales to continue her studies and suggested she enrol with Edmund Kinzinger at the Hans Hofmann School of Art in Munich.

Returning to Nelson in 1934, Scales met and inspired Toss Woollaston, before leaving New Zealand in 1936 to continue her studies at the Académie Ranson, Paris, and the Heatherley School of Fine Arts, London. During the 1950’s Scales’ handling of paint became more confident, with broader brush strokes and an increasingly atmospheric quality to her abstract landscapes.

In 1972 she resettled in New Zealand where she became recognised as a pioneering and remarkably independent painter. Her first solo exhibition was arranged by Colin McCahon at the Auckland City Art Gallery in 1975. McCahon expressed his admiration for Scales’work stating; ‘The beauty of her vision comes from her thinking about painting and from the grace and care she gives her work’.

When Gretchen Albrecht saw Scales’ paintings exhibited she was immediately drawn to their distinctive form. ‘The work of a woman following her own path ... she was living proof that painting could stand at the core of a woman’s life and sustain her through everything’. Gretchen Albrecht became a supporter and friend after assisting Scales to return to France in 1976, by encouraging her circle of friends to purchase paintings. Scales would return to New Zealand permanently in 1977.

From Frances Hodgkins to May Smith, Mar 1940 Studio - West St - Corfe Castle - Dorset

‘I am still in Dorset. It is not wildly exciting, but I have a Studio and when I want “picturesque” I go out & look for it. I have a Water Colour Show opening next week at Lefevres & feel it is up to me to put in an appearance. Kitty Church has just had a highly successful show there sold 13 small priced paintings & put herself on the map’.

Kitty (Katharine) Church (later West) (1910-1999) was born in London and expressed an early desire to paint. She trained at the Brighton School of Art, the Royal Academy Schools 1930-33 and the Slade School of Fine Art 1933-34. In 1933 she had her first solo exhibition with Lucy Wertheim’s gallery in London. She also exhibited with the New English Art Club and showed regularly with The London Group. From 1937 to 1947 she exhibited at Leferve Gallery, London.

In 1937 she married Anthony West, son of the writers Dame Rebecca West and H.G. Wells. The following year the couple moved to a farm in Berkshire where they were visited regularly by a wide circle of friends that included Frances Hodgkins, Ivon Hitchens, John Piper and his wife Myfanwy.

Hodgkins painted a number of works whilst staying with the couple, including Double Portrait No.2 (Katharine and Anthony West) now held in the collection of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. The Wests were also instrumental in Hodgkins’ recovery after surgery in 1941, collecting her from hospital and caring for her in their home during her convalescence.

After the war Katharine and Anthony separated and she moved with the children to Sutton House near Wimborne, Dorset, where she added a studio and ran the Hambledon Gallery at Blandford Forum. While Church painted in many locations over the years it is Dorset that she made particularly her own. In oil, Church was as likely to produce portraits as still life paintings, but in watercolour, landscape was her favourite theme. Eastbury Gates, Tarrant Gunville, Dorset is entirely typical of the artist’s work in this medium in her dashing brushwork and lively colour. The present scene is of one of the remaining elements of the once magnificent 18th century mansion, Eastbury House at Tarrant Gunville in the heart of the Dorset countryside. It seems fitting that her painting companion at this spot was at times John Piper, known for his own depictions of the historic landed estates of Britain.

At the Hambledon Gallery, Church promoted the work of her early art school friends Mary Fedden and Julian Trevelyan, alongside work by the Pipers, John Craxton, Leonard Rosoman, Cecil Beaton and Frances Hodgkins. She exhibited a major body of Hodgkins’work at the Gallery in 1966, where a number of paintings were acquired by the Dunedin Public Art Gallery. While busying herself at the gallery Kitty never stopped painting. In the ‘80s her work was included in the exhibition John Piper and British New-Romantics at the National Museum of Wales.

From Frances Hodgkins to John Piper, c. Sep 1941, Studio, East St, Corfe Castle, Dorset

‘I am looking forward eagerly to tomorrow’s Spectator & your verdict of the Show, ... I look for severity as well as gentleness & wisdom & wit in all you write. I can only make a feeble guess at all that you have done to make my Show a living valid thing. What time I have been eating my heart out down here because I can’t see my own darling Show’.

John Egerton Christmas Piper CH (1903-1992) was born in Epsom, England, and educated at Epsom College, the Richmond School of Art and the Royal College of Art, London. In the early 1930s Piper exhibited with the London Group and became secretary of The Seven & Five Society which included Henry Moore, Ivon Hitchens, Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth. It is believed he met Frances Hodgkins through the society when she was elected a member in 1929. The influence of The Seven & Five Society is clearly evident in Piper’s work, seeing him embrace a number of media, including painting and print-making.

Piper, together with writer Myfanwy Evans, founded the contemporary art journal Axis in 1935. It was through his work as an art critic for The Listener, his work on Axis and his membership with The Seven & Five Society, that Piper was at the forefront of the modernist movement in Britain throughout the 1930s. By the late 1930s Piper had returned to a more naturalistic style. He concentrated on landscape and architectural subjects in an emotionally charged approach that was a continuation of the nineteenth century English Romantic tradition.

At the outbreak of the Second World War, Piper was commissioned by Sir Kenneth Clark and the War Artists’ Advisory Committee to capture the effects of the war on the British landscape. The devastation of the Blitz was easily assimilated to Piper’s personal interest in old ruined buildings. Cascade Bridge, Halswell is typical of what Piper is famous for in Britain; his war-time work, documenting bombed churches, most notably in Coventry, Bath and Bristol. The resulting work utilised to great effect his interests in architecture, abstraction and printmaking. The subject here also illustrates Piper’s other, closely related, major subject matter of country houses and estates, also victims of deterioration. He had a sell-out exhibition in 1940 at the Leicester Galleries, featuring several works of derelict ruins.

Piper & Evans married in 1937 and became two of Frances Hodgkins’ closest friends in the latter period of her life. Piper regularly wrote to Hodgkins and reviewed her exhibitions exclaiming on one occasion, ‘Frances those paintings are knock-out’after viewing her 1941 Leicester Galleries exhibition.