Frances Hodgkins Creating Space
Over the past twelve months I have undertaken some exciting Frances Hodgkins research projects travelling to Bridgnorth in Shropshire, Burford & Chipping Camden in the Cotswolds and Cerne Abbas in Dorset finding the places where Hodgkins lived and painted.
More recently my good friend John Gow asked me to compile the catalogue entries and do background research for his upcoming exhibition Frances Hodgkins, Creating Space at Gow Langsford Gallery.
This exhibition, accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with essays by Mary Kisler, is certainly an exhibition not to be missed. There are fourteen paintings in watercolour and gouache ranging from Dordrecht in 1907 to Cerne Abbas in 1943, an important 1931 charcoal drawing and a fantastic museum quality early 1930’s oil on canvas painted in the Suffolk home of Hodgkins’ friends Cedric Morris and Arthur Lett Haines.
The exhibition at Gow Langsford Gallery, 28 – 36 Wellesley Street, Auckland is open until June 25th.
“Hodgkins’ lifelong determination to make art, to continue challenging the conventions of her perceived style, drove her to embed herself in the very heart of the art world in the UK and gain the respect of her peers and art critics alike. Always struggling for money, she relied heavily on her family, and in particular, on her friends and patrons in the UK. They saw her rare talent and backed her drive to make new and challenging works. Just as her audience would come to terms with one body of work Hodgkins would push through a barrier and leap into a new, more challenging style.
She was never complacent and was always excited about the next work she was going to create. Creating Space brings together a collection of works in graphite, watercolour, gouache and oil. Travel with Hodgkins from Dordrecht to Dorset, over forty years of her practice, and see her continually striving towards a new visual language”.
- John Gow, 2025
THE JAPANESE LANTERN, C.1912
watercolour on paper
685 x 685mm
All images courtesy of Gow Langsford Gallery