Finding Frances Hodgkins

Finding Frances Hodgkins

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MARY KISLER

Finding Frances Hodgkins

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MARY KISLER

Finding Frances Hodgkins

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Contents xx Introduction xx 01 Caudebec-en-Caux France xx 02 Les Andelys and Dinan France xx 03 Tangier and TĂŠtouan Morocco xx 04 Mantua Italy xx 05 San Remo Italy xx 06 Nice France xx 07 St Paul du Var/ St-Paul-de-Vence France xx 08 St Jeannet France

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xx 09 Antibes France xx 10 St Tropez France xx 11 Marseilles France xx 12 Cassis France xx 13 Martigues France xx 14 Avignon France xx 15 Paris France xx 16 Penzance England

xx 18 Leeds, Manchester and Liverpool England xx 19 Ibiza Spain xx 20 Tossa de Mar Spain xx 21 London England xx 22 Meifod, Bridgnorth Wales xx 24 Ponterwyd, Llangurig and Dolaucothi Wales xx 24 Solva, Middle Hill, Abereiddi and Porthgain Wales

xx 25 Worth Matravers, Swanage and Kimmeridge Dorset England xx 26 Cerne Abbas England xx 27 Corfe England xx 28 Bradford-on-Tone England xx Conclusion xx Notes xx Select biography xx Acknowledgements xx About the author xx Index

xx 17 Bodinnick England

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Contents xx Introduction xx 01 Caudebec-en-Caux France xx 02 Les Andelys and Dinan France xx 03 Tangier and TĂŠtouan Morocco xx 04 Mantua Italy xx 05 San Remo Italy xx 06 Nice France xx 07 St Paul du Var/ St-Paul-de-Vence France xx 08 St Jeannet France

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xx 09 Antibes France xx 10 St Tropez France xx 11 Marseilles France xx 12 Cassis France xx 13 Martigues France xx 14 Avignon France xx 15 Paris France xx 16 Penzance England

xx 18 Leeds, Manchester and Liverpool England xx 19 Ibiza Spain xx 20 Tossa de Mar Spain xx 21 London England xx 22 Meifod, Bridgnorth Wales xx 24 Ponterwyd, Llangurig and Dolaucothi Wales xx 24 Solva, Middle Hill, Abereiddi and Porthgain Wales

xx 25 Worth Matravers, Swanage and Kimmeridge Dorset England xx 26 Cerne Abbas England xx 27 Corfe England xx 28 Bradford-on-Tone England xx Conclusion xx Notes xx Select biography xx Acknowledgements xx About the author xx Index

xx 17 Bodinnick England

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Introduction

We had a large bedroom furnished with rough wooden beds on which were rudimentary mattresses stuffed with straw, and across a courtyard was a primitive kitchen, attached to a barn where the family’s hard-working donkey and mule spent their nights, and where swarms of flies hovered and buzzed during the day. We drew water, made drinkable by the addition of a chunk of lime, from the nearby well. Another well down the rocky path to the bay was good only for washing ourselves and our clothes after a day swimming at ‘our’ beach, a small cove beneath a tiny whitewashed church,

I

n 2013, as Senior Curator, Mackelvie Collection, International Art at

where the Madonna had taken over the role of a much more archaic

Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, I took on the task of updating an

goddess, guarding the nearby well in a walled orchard of figs.

unpublished catalogue raisonné of the works of New Zealand expatriate

As we were gathered more and more into the family, our Greek

artist Frances Hodgkins begun by former Auckland Art Gallery director

improving out of sheer necessity, we helped with various tasks on the

Rodney Wilson. A book (or website, as in Hodgkins’ case) that hopes

farm, walking behind the mule pulling an iron plough and gathering

to capture all the works of an artist with up-to-date information is

potatoes from the newly turned earth. We loaded them into large olive-

a challenge at any time. It became apparent early on that there were a

oil tins that had been turned into buckets with the aid of a rough piece of

number of works without titles, or of unnamed places; it was also striking

wood fixed across the top as a handle. Nothing was ever wasted. We spent

just how different from each other so many of Hodgkins’ paintings are,

one day planting a field of onions, bending until exhausted — long before

in part because she was constantly on the move. Faced with trying to sort

our Greek family straightened their backs. David and a friend were also

out just how her painting style and subject matter evolved as a result of

roped into the wheat harvest. We were paid with wedding wine (a rosé far

her gypsy lifestyle, I decided to follow in her footsteps.

more palatable than the everyday retsina), chunks of τυρί, a hard white

Naively, I felt I was reasonably equipped to trace her journeys, having

goats’ cheese that grated like Parmigiano, and, before our departure the

travelled on and off for 30 years, and lived in a remote community far

second year, a platter of the roasted corpses of their beautiful white doves,

from the pressures of urban life. In the 1970s and 1980s I’d spent several

which was the best they could give us. We wept silent tears after the family

summers living on a remote farm on the Greek island of Paros in the

had left, as we had loved the doves’ swooping flight to and from the white-

Cyclades with my husband, David, and young son, Marcus. We rented a

plastered dovecot on one side of the barn.

dowry house, a small cluster of rooms around a courtyard, traditionally

One day Marcus endured an agonising three-hour donkey ride (sitting

given to each daughter of a family so that they would always maintain

behind the saddle on the animal’s rough rump) into the centre of the

a link to the family land. Ours belonged to an elderly woman in the

island, where we pushed our way through shoulder-high wheat to a tiny

village of Naoussa, while the farm itself was some five kilometres away

church, its whitewashed walls catching the late-afternoon sun. Its interior

at Langari, where we shared the simple but deeply satisfying life of three

was simplicity itself: a barrel-vaulted roof; black and white tiles on the floor;

generations of the family, with its seasonal cycles of hardship, harvest and

and a primitive altar behind a simple curtain, standing in for the more

ritual celebration.

ornate iconostatis in larger Greek chuches, on which hung a picture of the

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Introduction

We had a large bedroom furnished with rough wooden beds on which were rudimentary mattresses stuffed with straw, and across a courtyard was a primitive kitchen, attached to a barn where the family’s hard-working donkey and mule spent their nights, and where swarms of flies hovered and buzzed during the day. We drew water, made drinkable by the addition of a chunk of lime, from the nearby well. Another well down the rocky path to the bay was good only for washing ourselves and our clothes after a day swimming at ‘our’ beach, a small cove beneath a tiny whitewashed church,

I

n 2013, as Senior Curator, Mackelvie Collection, International Art at

where the Madonna had taken over the role of a much more archaic

Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, I took on the task of updating an

goddess, guarding the nearby well in a walled orchard of figs.

unpublished catalogue raisonné of the works of New Zealand expatriate

As we were gathered more and more into the family, our Greek

artist Frances Hodgkins begun by former Auckland Art Gallery director

improving out of sheer necessity, we helped with various tasks on the

Rodney Wilson. A book (or website, as in Hodgkins’ case) that hopes

farm, walking behind the mule pulling an iron plough and gathering

to capture all the works of an artist with up-to-date information is

potatoes from the newly turned earth. We loaded them into large olive-

a challenge at any time. It became apparent early on that there were a

oil tins that had been turned into buckets with the aid of a rough piece of

number of works without titles, or of unnamed places; it was also striking

wood fixed across the top as a handle. Nothing was ever wasted. We spent

just how different from each other so many of Hodgkins’ paintings are,

one day planting a field of onions, bending until exhausted — long before

in part because she was constantly on the move. Faced with trying to sort

our Greek family straightened their backs. David and a friend were also

out just how her painting style and subject matter evolved as a result of

roped into the wheat harvest. We were paid with wedding wine (a rosé far

her gypsy lifestyle, I decided to follow in her footsteps.

more palatable than the everyday retsina), chunks of τυρί, a hard white

Naively, I felt I was reasonably equipped to trace her journeys, having

goats’ cheese that grated like Parmigiano, and, before our departure the

travelled on and off for 30 years, and lived in a remote community far

second year, a platter of the roasted corpses of their beautiful white doves,

from the pressures of urban life. In the 1970s and 1980s I’d spent several

which was the best they could give us. We wept silent tears after the family

summers living on a remote farm on the Greek island of Paros in the

had left, as we had loved the doves’ swooping flight to and from the white-

Cyclades with my husband, David, and young son, Marcus. We rented a

plastered dovecot on one side of the barn.

dowry house, a small cluster of rooms around a courtyard, traditionally

One day Marcus endured an agonising three-hour donkey ride (sitting

given to each daughter of a family so that they would always maintain

behind the saddle on the animal’s rough rump) into the centre of the

a link to the family land. Ours belonged to an elderly woman in the

island, where we pushed our way through shoulder-high wheat to a tiny

village of Naoussa, while the farm itself was some five kilometres away

church, its whitewashed walls catching the late-afternoon sun. Its interior

at Langari, where we shared the simple but deeply satisfying life of three

was simplicity itself: a barrel-vaulted roof; black and white tiles on the floor;

generations of the family, with its seasonal cycles of hardship, harvest and

and a primitive altar behind a simple curtain, standing in for the more

ritual celebration.

ornate iconostatis in larger Greek chuches, on which hung a picture of the

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Hodgkins_TXT_MV2.2.indd 6-7

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Virgin Mary. The cloth was covered with stamped tin and silver votives of

Hodgkins. Like her, I didn’t always travel alone, and was grateful for the

breasts, including torsos of Victorian women in bustles with their upper

company of friends who volunteered to help: my ex-neighbour Mary Gee,

bodies exposed, for the church is dedicated to breastfeeding mothers.

who was with me for my first 10 days on the French Riviera; Chloe Steer,

I assumed we were there with Leila and her two lovely daughters to

a long-time friend and selfless volunteer who has worked on the project

give prayers of thanks, but instead we swept the church floor clear of dust,

from the start; and Catherine Hammond, senior librarian at the Auckland

leaves and the odd dead spider, trimmed the wicks of the oil lamps and

Art Gallery. Catherine organised visits for the two of us to libraries and

placed new candles in their holders before crossing ourselves silently and

archives in Paris and London, and gamely allowed me to drive her around

making the long trek home again. I came to love the simple rituals that

Pembrokeshire in Wales. Without them, and others I met on the way, this

interwove faith, community, land and sea, but in our time on the island

project would never have progressed.

we also saw how politics could divide a community. It was an early insight

I was unable to achieve everything I wanted on my first trip, so I led

into what Frances Hodgkins found in some of the villages in Morocco,

a tour back to France and Spain in 2016 in the hope of tidying up loose

France and Spain during her constant journeying.

ends, and returned again in 2018. You never can discover everything, but

When I finally went to university I wanted to study Greek, as I was still

you can die trying . . .

writing to our family on Paros, but the subject wasn’t available so I chose

I have structured this book around the routes I took, rather than

Italian and art history instead. Since then I’ve been fortunate to spend

tracking each place Hodkgins stayed in or the exact chronology of her

a considerable time in Italy, but always doing Italian, Renaissance and

travels. She visited Martigues five times, for example, but I went there

baroque research, absorbed by the beauty of the art and architecture in

only twice, and while she sometimes stayed in one place for weeks

Florence, Venice and Rome. I remain a social art historian, believing that

or months, I might have had only a day or, as was the case in parts of

art is inextricably linked to the society and locale in which it was created, if

England, several hours.

only we are able to understand it. I am equally curious about how and why

My journey began in Mantua in northern Italy with Mary, moved

artists create in the way they do, whether painting in a traditional manner

across the southern coast of France and into Spain, where I was

on canvas or church wall, or playing the magician with the digital tools

accompanied in part by fellow Hodgkins aficionado Antoni Ribas Tur

we have available today. But my journey in search of Frances Hodgkins

and then Chloe, then on to Paris and England. There the journey stretched

and the places in which she worked was more than that. As a modernist

along the coast from St Ives as far as Brighton and up to London, where I

she was committed to the quotidian rather than the grand statement, and

said goodbye to Chloe and took up the search with Catherine. We spent a

I wanted to discover how she transformed ‘the everyday’ into something

week in the archives of Tate Britain and other repositories like the British

that was often lyrical, even rapturous, and ultimately timeless.

Council, then took the train to Cardiff — Catherine to attend a library

From early on in my work on updating the Hodgkins’ catalogue it

conference and I to view the Hodgkins paintings in the city’s public

become obvious that many of her paintings were specific to place. But the

gallery. We travelled on to Pembrokeshire, then back to London, before I

question was: where exactly? Many titles had been given to paintings long

struck off for Wales, returning to London via Manchester, Birmingham

after they were done, by dealers and auctioneers, and I sensed that they

and Liverpool. And then we returned to Paris.

weren’t all correct. Accordingly, in 2015, I set off searching for Frances

8

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Brittany is the only region Hodgkins frequented that I have failed to

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12/12/2018 18:02

Virgin Mary. The cloth was covered with stamped tin and silver votives of

Hodgkins. Like her, I didn’t always travel alone, and was grateful for the

breasts, including torsos of Victorian women in bustles with their upper

company of friends who volunteered to help: my ex-neighbour Mary Gee,

bodies exposed, for the church is dedicated to breastfeeding mothers.

who was with me for my first 10 days on the French Riviera; Chloe Steer,

I assumed we were there with Leila and her two lovely daughters to

a long-time friend and selfless volunteer who has worked on the project

give prayers of thanks, but instead we swept the church floor clear of dust,

from the start; and Catherine Hammond, senior librarian at the Auckland

leaves and the odd dead spider, trimmed the wicks of the oil lamps and

Art Gallery. Catherine organised visits for the two of us to libraries and

placed new candles in their holders before crossing ourselves silently and

archives in Paris and London, and gamely allowed me to drive her around

making the long trek home again. I came to love the simple rituals that

Pembrokeshire in Wales. Without them, and others I met on the way, this

interwove faith, community, land and sea, but in our time on the island

project would never have progressed.

we also saw how politics could divide a community. It was an early insight

I was unable to achieve everything I wanted on my first trip, so I led

into what Frances Hodgkins found in some of the villages in Morocco,

a tour back to France and Spain in 2016 in the hope of tidying up loose

France and Spain during her constant journeying.

ends, and returned again in 2018. You never can discover everything, but

When I finally went to university I wanted to study Greek, as I was still

you can die trying . . .

writing to our family on Paros, but the subject wasn’t available so I chose

I have structured this book around the routes I took, rather than

Italian and art history instead. Since then I’ve been fortunate to spend

tracking each place Hodkgins stayed in or the exact chronology of her

a considerable time in Italy, but always doing Italian, Renaissance and

travels. She visited Martigues five times, for example, but I went there

baroque research, absorbed by the beauty of the art and architecture in

only twice, and while she sometimes stayed in one place for weeks

Florence, Venice and Rome. I remain a social art historian, believing that

or months, I might have had only a day or, as was the case in parts of

art is inextricably linked to the society and locale in which it was created, if

England, several hours.

only we are able to understand it. I am equally curious about how and why

My journey began in Mantua in northern Italy with Mary, moved

artists create in the way they do, whether painting in a traditional manner

across the southern coast of France and into Spain, where I was

on canvas or church wall, or playing the magician with the digital tools

accompanied in part by fellow Hodgkins aficionado Antoni Ribas Tur

we have available today. But my journey in search of Frances Hodgkins

and then Chloe, then on to Paris and England. There the journey stretched

and the places in which she worked was more than that. As a modernist

along the coast from St Ives as far as Brighton and up to London, where I

she was committed to the quotidian rather than the grand statement, and

said goodbye to Chloe and took up the search with Catherine. We spent a

I wanted to discover how she transformed ‘the everyday’ into something

week in the archives of Tate Britain and other repositories like the British

that was often lyrical, even rapturous, and ultimately timeless.

Council, then took the train to Cardiff — Catherine to attend a library

From early on in my work on updating the Hodgkins’ catalogue it

conference and I to view the Hodgkins paintings in the city’s public

become obvious that many of her paintings were specific to place. But the

gallery. We travelled on to Pembrokeshire, then back to London, before I

question was: where exactly? Many titles had been given to paintings long

struck off for Wales, returning to London via Manchester, Birmingham

after they were done, by dealers and auctioneers, and I sensed that they

and Liverpool. And then we returned to Paris.

weren’t all correct. Accordingly, in 2015, I set off searching for Frances

8

Hodgkins_TXT_MV2.2.indd 8-9

Brittany is the only region Hodgkins frequented that I have failed to

9

12/12/2018 18:02

visit. I tried in both 2015 and 2016, but it would have taken an eight-hour

possible, I have also included in the text parts of Hodgkins’ letters, which

journey to get there, whether by train or by flying from the south of France,

are remarkable in themselves for the way they show her ability to paint

and even the train from Paris can take six hours. With the likelihood of

pictures in words. Hodgkins’ spelling was notoriously erratic, so in some

only an overnight stay, it proved impossible. Fortunately, Hodgkins was

cases I have made small corrections to facilitate reading; otherwise her

much keener on including the names of the Breton towns where she

original spelling and creative use of punctuation remain. I see the text as

stayed in the titles of her works, and these along with information from

a kind of partner with the catalogue that focuses on works included in the

websites, her own photographs and the invaluable postcards collated by

exhibition Frances Hodgkins: Her European Journeys, allowing me to take

Professor Roger Collins of the hotels and environs in which she lodged,

you, the reader, with me on my travels.

have given me a sense of her responses to these places.

Apart from when she went to Paris, almost all her visits to France were for teaching purposes, and the coastal towns of Brittany were popular resorts for tourists and artists alike. There the mild summer weather made it easy to work en plein air; accommodation and restaurants were plentiful; and travel between towns and villages appears to have caused

F

rances Hodgkins was born in 1869 in Dunedin, a city built on the proceeds of gold and the wealthiest in New Zealand at the time. Her father, William Hodgkins, was a solicitor, but his work seems to have

taken second place to his love of art. Growing up in England, he had been

few difficulties. There was also the benefit of stormy skyscapes when the

particularly drawn to the landscapes of John Constable and William

autumn months began to advance.

Turner, the former famous for depictions of the bucolic rural landscapes

With images of all Hodgkins’ known works stored on my iPad, my

of Suffolk, the latter for his remarkable capture of the effects of weather

hope was to stand in the places Hodgkins stood, to look at the same

— mist, storms, brilliant skies — that spoke of the sublime and untamed

views, to breathe the sea air and smell the wild herbs and resinous forests

natural world. William Hodgkins found both in Central Otago, and would

so as to greater understand the conscious decisions she made when

spend his weekends with his daughters, Isabel and Frances, capturing

translating these things on to paper or canvas. My travels have allowed

these effects in watercolour. His wife, Rachel, had always believed that

me to comprehend more clearly the way villages, their inhabitants,

Frances had more talent musically and would make her living in this

their everyday objects — buildings, pottery, shrines, even tree stumps —

field, but she hadn’t considered her younger daughter’s independent

became the motifs that linked her works to a specific time and place. The

streak. And what her family failed to see was patently apparent to others.

sketches created in each place became a visual memory bank on which

Two decades after Frances Hodgkins’ death in Dorset, England, in 1947,

she could draw when an oil painting or gouache needed ‘that special

a recording was made of those who remembered her in Dunedin. In her

something’ to tie a composition together. I have garnered a much wider

family’s eyes, Isabel was both the beauty of the family and the inheritor of

appreciation of the richness and diversity of her work, which remained

her father’s talent. Yet according to a former neighbour, Elsie Royce (now

vital and everchanging until the end of her life.

Mrs Morah), Frances often had a pencil in her hand, sitting down one day

So this is a memoir of my own journeying, the wonderful friends and

at the Royces’ long table to make a copy of a painting of a cat and kittens

colleagues who have dipped in and out of particular places with me, and

hanging over the mantelpiece. She asked if they had any paints in the house,

the adventures and misadventures we experienced on the way. Wherever

and these were duly supplied. When Elsie’s mother saw what Frances had

10

Hodgkins_TXT_MV2.2.indd 10-11

11

12/12/2018 18:02

visit. I tried in both 2015 and 2016, but it would have taken an eight-hour

possible, I have also included in the text parts of Hodgkins’ letters, which

journey to get there, whether by train or by flying from the south of France,

are remarkable in themselves for the way they show her ability to paint

and even the train from Paris can take six hours. With the likelihood of

pictures in words. Hodgkins’ spelling was notoriously erratic, so in some

only an overnight stay, it proved impossible. Fortunately, Hodgkins was

cases I have made small corrections to facilitate reading; otherwise her

much keener on including the names of the Breton towns where she

original spelling and creative use of punctuation remain. I see the text as

stayed in the titles of her works, and these along with information from

a kind of partner with the catalogue that focuses on works included in the

websites, her own photographs and the invaluable postcards collated by

exhibition Frances Hodgkins: Her European Journeys, allowing me to take

Professor Roger Collins of the hotels and environs in which she lodged,

you, the reader, with me on my travels.

have given me a sense of her responses to these places.

Apart from when she went to Paris, almost all her visits to France were for teaching purposes, and the coastal towns of Brittany were popular resorts for tourists and artists alike. There the mild summer weather made it easy to work en plein air; accommodation and restaurants were plentiful; and travel between towns and villages appears to have caused

F

rances Hodgkins was born in 1869 in Dunedin, a city built on the proceeds of gold and the wealthiest in New Zealand at the time. Her father, William Hodgkins, was a solicitor, but his work seems to have

taken second place to his love of art. Growing up in England, he had been

few difficulties. There was also the benefit of stormy skyscapes when the

particularly drawn to the landscapes of John Constable and William

autumn months began to advance.

Turner, the former famous for depictions of the bucolic rural landscapes

With images of all Hodgkins’ known works stored on my iPad, my

of Suffolk, the latter for his remarkable capture of the effects of weather

hope was to stand in the places Hodgkins stood, to look at the same

— mist, storms, brilliant skies — that spoke of the sublime and untamed

views, to breathe the sea air and smell the wild herbs and resinous forests

natural world. William Hodgkins found both in Central Otago, and would

so as to greater understand the conscious decisions she made when

spend his weekends with his daughters, Isabel and Frances, capturing

translating these things on to paper or canvas. My travels have allowed

these effects in watercolour. His wife, Rachel, had always believed that

me to comprehend more clearly the way villages, their inhabitants,

Frances had more talent musically and would make her living in this

their everyday objects — buildings, pottery, shrines, even tree stumps —

field, but she hadn’t considered her younger daughter’s independent

became the motifs that linked her works to a specific time and place. The

streak. And what her family failed to see was patently apparent to others.

sketches created in each place became a visual memory bank on which

Two decades after Frances Hodgkins’ death in Dorset, England, in 1947,

she could draw when an oil painting or gouache needed ‘that special

a recording was made of those who remembered her in Dunedin. In her

something’ to tie a composition together. I have garnered a much wider

family’s eyes, Isabel was both the beauty of the family and the inheritor of

appreciation of the richness and diversity of her work, which remained

her father’s talent. Yet according to a former neighbour, Elsie Royce (now

vital and everchanging until the end of her life.

Mrs Morah), Frances often had a pencil in her hand, sitting down one day

So this is a memoir of my own journeying, the wonderful friends and

at the Royces’ long table to make a copy of a painting of a cat and kittens

colleagues who have dipped in and out of particular places with me, and

hanging over the mantelpiece. She asked if they had any paints in the house,

the adventures and misadventures we experienced on the way. Wherever

and these were duly supplied. When Elsie’s mother saw what Frances had

10

Hodgkins_TXT_MV2.2.indd 10-11

11

12/12/2018 18:02

done, she said, ‘Someday that girl will be an artist.’ Elsie Royce went on:

world where she would be less constrained by the conservative mores of

‘She wasn’t dominated, but she was thought nothing much of by her own

colonial New Zealand. This, however, would have to wait.

family . . . Frances was rather shortish and exactly like the photographs you

William Hodgkins died in 1898, leaving his family far less well-off than

see of her. I don’t think you would have called her good-looking but she was

they had expected, so Hodgkins set herself up as a teacher. She developed

a very bright talkative sort of person and I think in a way that she felt a bit

a love of painting people, as well as landscapes, and although she did some

of an inferiority complex when she was young . . . only because she didn’t

formal watercolour portraits when commissioned to do so, preferred

get much encouragement you see from her own family.’

painting domestic scenes. She also spent time on the Otago Peninsula

After spending time in Australia, the Sienese painter Girolamo Nerli set

painting Māori women and children, whom she persuaded to sit for her in

himself up as a teacher in Dunedin in 1893, and Frances Hodgkins joined

exchange for a few pennies. Although she would have been unaware of it,

his painting class. Nerli wasn’t the most dedicated of teachers, preferring

she was developing a practice that would remain with her for the rest of her

to spend his time in the hotel after setting his students the subject for

career, and her painting became fresh and more individualistic as a result.

the day, but he evidently provided them with stimulating descriptions of

Frances and Mrs Hodgkins moved to Wellington, where Isabel was

the changes that were taking place in the studios of Europe. He belonged

living with her husband, the budding politician William Field. But

to a group of painters known as the Macchiaioli or mark makers, whose

already Frances had her eyes on Europe, resisting expectations that she

deliberate avoidance of the smooth glazes and high finishes promoted by

would take care of her mother. She returned to Dunedin to teach for a

the traditional academies of Italy, France and England served as a precursor

year, then on 6 February 1901 boarded the Moana, bound for England via

of impressionism. They did, however, retain some of the darker tones of the

Wellington, where she farewelled her family, and Australia.

Academy, something Hodgkins would turn away from in her own work.

Her intention was to stay in Europe for a couple of years to acquire

Partly this may have stemmed from her preference for watercolour at the

further skills before returning to New Zealand permanently. In fact she

time, and the translucent effects that could be achieved by painting wet on

only ever made two trips home to New Zealand, the first at the end of 1904,

wet — that is, saturating the paper first and then floating the pigments onto

when she set up a studio in Bowen Street in Wellington. Her engagement to

the damp surface. It took great control to get the effect needed, and already

an English journalist and writer, Thomas Wilby, whom she and her friend

in some of her Otago watercolours she had started experimenting with

and fellow New Zealand artist Dorothy Kate Richmond had met on the

shorter dabs of colour on dry paper as a contrast to her washes.

boat home, was announced in the newspapers at the end of the year. Wilby

Hodgkins was 24 when she started in Nerli’s classes, and the results

had disembarked in Cairo, but had sent Frances a scarab with a wittily

proved very rewarding. Both her family and Dunedin society at large

illustrated letter describing its function within ancient Egyptian culture,

began to take her seriously, and in 1895 and 1896 she took the two courses

and romance blossomed. After the announcement of their engagement, he

that allowed her to sit the examinations set in South Kensington, England,

wrote a letter to Mrs Hodgkins from New York, laying out his intentions:

that would qualify her to teach. She passed with excellent grades, and

‘It is difficult to know exactly what to say in this preliminary letter.

began to visualise a future in which she could make her living through

You of course know my intentions with regard to Frances. She has, in

art. But Nerli had done more than prepare her for a career — he had given

a weak moment, promised to make me the happiest of men in his wife

her a sense that there was a bohemian society on the other side of the

and his mother-in-law. The business side of the matter I have already

12

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done, she said, ‘Someday that girl will be an artist.’ Elsie Royce went on:

world where she would be less constrained by the conservative mores of

‘She wasn’t dominated, but she was thought nothing much of by her own

colonial New Zealand. This, however, would have to wait.

family . . . Frances was rather shortish and exactly like the photographs you

William Hodgkins died in 1898, leaving his family far less well-off than

see of her. I don’t think you would have called her good-looking but she was

they had expected, so Hodgkins set herself up as a teacher. She developed

a very bright talkative sort of person and I think in a way that she felt a bit

a love of painting people, as well as landscapes, and although she did some

of an inferiority complex when she was young . . . only because she didn’t

formal watercolour portraits when commissioned to do so, preferred

get much encouragement you see from her own family.’

painting domestic scenes. She also spent time on the Otago Peninsula

After spending time in Australia, the Sienese painter Girolamo Nerli set

painting Māori women and children, whom she persuaded to sit for her in

himself up as a teacher in Dunedin in 1893, and Frances Hodgkins joined

exchange for a few pennies. Although she would have been unaware of it,

his painting class. Nerli wasn’t the most dedicated of teachers, preferring

she was developing a practice that would remain with her for the rest of her

to spend his time in the hotel after setting his students the subject for

career, and her painting became fresh and more individualistic as a result.

the day, but he evidently provided them with stimulating descriptions of

Frances and Mrs Hodgkins moved to Wellington, where Isabel was

the changes that were taking place in the studios of Europe. He belonged

living with her husband, the budding politician William Field. But

to a group of painters known as the Macchiaioli or mark makers, whose

already Frances had her eyes on Europe, resisting expectations that she

deliberate avoidance of the smooth glazes and high finishes promoted by

would take care of her mother. She returned to Dunedin to teach for a

the traditional academies of Italy, France and England served as a precursor

year, then on 6 February 1901 boarded the Moana, bound for England via

of impressionism. They did, however, retain some of the darker tones of the

Wellington, where she farewelled her family, and Australia.

Academy, something Hodgkins would turn away from in her own work.

Her intention was to stay in Europe for a couple of years to acquire

Partly this may have stemmed from her preference for watercolour at the

further skills before returning to New Zealand permanently. In fact she

time, and the translucent effects that could be achieved by painting wet on

only ever made two trips home to New Zealand, the first at the end of 1904,

wet — that is, saturating the paper first and then floating the pigments onto

when she set up a studio in Bowen Street in Wellington. Her engagement to

the damp surface. It took great control to get the effect needed, and already

an English journalist and writer, Thomas Wilby, whom she and her friend

in some of her Otago watercolours she had started experimenting with

and fellow New Zealand artist Dorothy Kate Richmond had met on the

shorter dabs of colour on dry paper as a contrast to her washes.

boat home, was announced in the newspapers at the end of the year. Wilby

Hodgkins was 24 when she started in Nerli’s classes, and the results

had disembarked in Cairo, but had sent Frances a scarab with a wittily

proved very rewarding. Both her family and Dunedin society at large

illustrated letter describing its function within ancient Egyptian culture,

began to take her seriously, and in 1895 and 1896 she took the two courses

and romance blossomed. After the announcement of their engagement, he

that allowed her to sit the examinations set in South Kensington, England,

wrote a letter to Mrs Hodgkins from New York, laying out his intentions:

that would qualify her to teach. She passed with excellent grades, and

‘It is difficult to know exactly what to say in this preliminary letter.

began to visualise a future in which she could make her living through

You of course know my intentions with regard to Frances. She has, in

art. But Nerli had done more than prepare her for a career — he had given

a weak moment, promised to make me the happiest of men in his wife

her a sense that there was a bohemian society on the other side of the

and his mother-in-law. The business side of the matter I have already

12

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13

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ABOVE Source

Name, Details.

Hodgkins_TXT_MV2.2.indd 14-15

12/12/2018 18:02

ABOVE Source

Name, Details.

Hodgkins_TXT_MV2.2.indd 14-15

12/12/2018 18:02

10

T

St Tropez

in St Tropez. We were highly amused when the driver stopped after a

FRANCE

he road to St Tropez skirts around the gulf close to the water’s edge.

Today almost the whole way is built up, crammed with traffic and young people hauling their windsurfing boards across the road to

the sea. At each stop locals joined our bus, many heading to the market certain distance so that the smokers (more than half the passengers, as it turned out) could leap out and sit on a wall while they had a gasper.

Once satisfied they got back on board and we sailed off again towards our destination.

It was unexpectedly quiet in St Tropez: most of the glitterati were at the Cannes Film Festival and many tourists are not prepared to travel by bus, preferring to stay only at those places serviced by a railway station or airport. We strolled in the direction of the market, passing the little Musée de l’Annonciade, housed in a former church of that name, which Mary complained was never open. This was a disappointment, as the museum has a delightful collection of modernist works, Paul Signac having done much for what in 1892 was a very quiet fishing village. His presence attracted other artists, including Henri Matisse, Francis Picabia, André Derain, Pierre Bonnard and Albert Marquet, whose impressionist and fauve works help to fill the walls of the musée. We walked on to St Tropez’s large central square with its ubiquitous frilly border of pollarded plane trees, whose shade gives a sense of restful ease.

Hodgkins had first stopped in St Tropez briefly at the end of 1920, after a long and arduous journey. As always, her letters to friends and family painted an amusing picture of their travails, which included temporarily losing their luggage in Paris after a long ferry journey to get there: they had failed to keep hold of their baggage tags. Once that was sorted they hauled themselves onto an overheated train and headed south, before waking with cracking headaches at dawn.

When she complained about how awful the night had been, a Frenchman in the same compartment commented, ‘“I don’t know why Mademoiselle complains since she has slept like an infant all night”. It

95

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10

T

St Tropez

in St Tropez. We were highly amused when the driver stopped after a

FRANCE

he road to St Tropez skirts around the gulf close to the water’s edge.

Today almost the whole way is built up, crammed with traffic and young people hauling their windsurfing boards across the road to

the sea. At each stop locals joined our bus, many heading to the market certain distance so that the smokers (more than half the passengers, as it turned out) could leap out and sit on a wall while they had a gasper.

Once satisfied they got back on board and we sailed off again towards our destination.

It was unexpectedly quiet in St Tropez: most of the glitterati were at the Cannes Film Festival and many tourists are not prepared to travel by bus, preferring to stay only at those places serviced by a railway station or airport. We strolled in the direction of the market, passing the little Musée de l’Annonciade, housed in a former church of that name, which Mary complained was never open. This was a disappointment, as the museum has a delightful collection of modernist works, Paul Signac having done much for what in 1892 was a very quiet fishing village. His presence attracted other artists, including Henri Matisse, Francis Picabia, André Derain, Pierre Bonnard and Albert Marquet, whose impressionist and fauve works help to fill the walls of the musée. We walked on to St Tropez’s large central square with its ubiquitous frilly border of pollarded plane trees, whose shade gives a sense of restful ease.

Hodgkins had first stopped in St Tropez briefly at the end of 1920, after a long and arduous journey. As always, her letters to friends and family painted an amusing picture of their travails, which included temporarily losing their luggage in Paris after a long ferry journey to get there: they had failed to keep hold of their baggage tags. Once that was sorted they hauled themselves onto an overheated train and headed south, before waking with cracking headaches at dawn.

When she complained about how awful the night had been, a Frenchman in the same compartment commented, ‘“I don’t know why Mademoiselle complains since she has slept like an infant all night”. It

95

Hodgkins_TXT_MV2.2.indd 94-95

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was not true. So much for rapprochement. The French are in the worst of humours with us. They complain bitterly of our high priced coal. They certainly use too much of it in heating their trains . . . We saw hardly any of the devastated region running from Boulogne to Paris — here & there ruined houses but nothing very ruinously bad. As we got further South the colder it grew & we ran into floods, deluge of rain & when we were finally dumped at our station you couldn’t see where the sea ended & the floods began. It was Sunday afternoon at 5 o’c. No one in sight. We asked for a porter — the ticket lady said It is not indeed sad that our only porter is so ill? We said we thought it much sadder that two English ladies had to carry their own luggage. At last a boy with a Murillo face found a donkey & removed our luggage across from one platform to another. An hour’s wait. A little folding of the hands in sleep — for me at least, on the grass green couch in the waiting room, then on again thro’ the rising floods, by a sort of tram & then another tram, rain coming down like a shower bath thro’ the top, at last nearly dead & wishing we were tipped out into deep puddles & complete darkness at 9.45 we reached St Tropez.

‘A six course dinner solaced us — much wine — & bed for about 2 whole days. Awoke with horrible colds, a sort of plague which is plunging round & round the house, as soon as you get well you get worse again. I believe it is plague . . . St Tropez being off the tracer and unfashionable, is comparatively cheap. We are being done extremely well for less than 2 gns per week including wine. The exchange is still high, well over double normal. My pupil pays me £1 a week & two more will do the same after Xmas, so I am all right.’

In spite of her wry comments the sun came out and she was able to produce some bold charcoal sketches of the ploughed fields and pruned olive trees behind the village before moving on to Cassis. Hodgkins was a keen observer of local mores, and she was horrified at the way male children were treated in comparison to girls, not least because so many men had died during the war. A little boy staying at the hotel in St Tropez had fallen into the harbour and had been roundly slapped for it. Hodgkins ABOVE Source

Name, Details.

Hodgkins_TXT_MV2.2.indd 96-97

97

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was not true. So much for rapprochement. The French are in the worst of humours with us. They complain bitterly of our high priced coal. They certainly use too much of it in heating their trains . . . We saw hardly any of the devastated region running from Boulogne to Paris — here & there ruined houses but nothing very ruinously bad. As we got further South the colder it grew & we ran into floods, deluge of rain & when we were finally dumped at our station you couldn’t see where the sea ended & the floods began. It was Sunday afternoon at 5 o’c. No one in sight. We asked for a porter — the ticket lady said It is not indeed sad that our only porter is so ill? We said we thought it much sadder that two English ladies had to carry their own luggage. At last a boy with a Murillo face found a donkey & removed our luggage across from one platform to another. An hour’s wait. A little folding of the hands in sleep — for me at least, on the grass green couch in the waiting room, then on again thro’ the rising floods, by a sort of tram & then another tram, rain coming down like a shower bath thro’ the top, at last nearly dead & wishing we were tipped out into deep puddles & complete darkness at 9.45 we reached St Tropez.

‘A six course dinner solaced us — much wine — & bed for about 2 whole days. Awoke with horrible colds, a sort of plague which is plunging round & round the house, as soon as you get well you get worse again. I believe it is plague . . . St Tropez being off the tracer and unfashionable, is comparatively cheap. We are being done extremely well for less than 2 gns per week including wine. The exchange is still high, well over double normal. My pupil pays me £1 a week & two more will do the same after Xmas, so I am all right.’

In spite of her wry comments the sun came out and she was able to produce some bold charcoal sketches of the ploughed fields and pruned olive trees behind the village before moving on to Cassis. Hodgkins was a keen observer of local mores, and she was horrified at the way male children were treated in comparison to girls, not least because so many men had died during the war. A little boy staying at the hotel in St Tropez had fallen into the harbour and had been roundly slapped for it. Hodgkins ABOVE Source

Name, Details.

Hodgkins_TXT_MV2.2.indd 96-97

97

12/12/2018 18:03

described the event in great indignation, for at a time ‘when the Republic is in need of all its little citizens I thought it unduly severe. His father is a consumptive architect entrusted with the building of 15 churches in the devasted regions. Think of it. Better be drowned than disfigure poor

I

wonder what she would have thought had she lived long enough to see St Tropez’s mid-century transformation after Brigitte Bardot made it famous. Still, it remains a place dedicated to the sea, its vessels merely

smarter than the simple wooden fishing boats she was familiar with.

beautiful France with horrible little churches — assuming he was as bad

When Hodgkins first arrived there from Martigues the weather wasn’t

an architect as he was artist.’1

good enough to paint out of doors, so she produced a number of ink

She doesn’t give a name to the hotel from this first stay in St Tropez,

drawings which she sent off to Arthur Howell, promising watercolours as

possibly because she already knew she would be moving on. A photograph

soon as the storms abated and the sun came out. A month later she sent

of the time shows the unpaved quai, where fishing nets were piled high

off two batches of the desired works, now much gayer in colour, hoping

or laid out to dry and fishing boats were hauled up beneath rough houses,

that he would be pleased with them.

almost all without plaster.

Dorothy Selby had sent her the latest news and reviews from England,

Hodgkins returned to St Tropez in April 1931 after spending some time

and in her reply Hodgkins captured the ennui that can creep over you in

in Martigues. She wrote to her friend Dorothy Selby: ‘St Tropez is very

a Mediterranean summer: ‘Barling would love this place in summer. The

attractive but to be avoided in July–August when it is more of a disease

gay cafés & the colour & movement. It is a wicked little spot while the hot

from all I hear — Margate at its worst. Already the Hotels are packed. Such

weather lasts. One sits in a café, watches — talks — scandal — surmises. I

types. The young & goodlooking approaching as near Nudism as they

think I am the only one in St Tropez who really works hard!’3

dare — wh is pretty near. Lucky for me I have re-found an old friend & her

Throughout this time, Hodgkins kept a keen eye on the political

husband who have a villa here — with a jolly garden next door to Signac’s

situation in Europe, aware of the marked effect this was having on

villa. She is very keen on painting in an amateur way & arranges & collects

people’s incomes and investments. The Burges had been forced to sell

still life & flowers for me wh we do in the cool garden. I spend most of

their Hampshire home and their cars after their portfolio of stocks

my day up there. On Sundays we take lunch & spend the day in the Cork

and shares lost much of its value, and by renting the villa in St Tropez

Forests — very shady & cool & select — not a soul in sight. So the heat is

they could live more cheaply while also avoiding paying income tax.

supportable. Mosquitoes not too devouring — yet.

Hodgkins was extremely alarmed to discover that the financial crisis had

‘What do you plan for your holiday? Is Barling joining on with you this

driven Arthur Howell to close St George’s, although he had taken good

year? Sep. should be very jolly here & the worst of the crowd thinned out.

care of her interests by organising a contract with the Lefevre Gallery,

But perhaps too hot for you. There is always a sea breeze. I intend stopping

with whom she was to show for the rest of her career. Lefevre’s, which had

on as I am doing good work & life down here is simpler & cheaper than

opened in King Street in St James’s, London, in 1926, was at the forefront

elsewhere & that is an item with me.’ Her friends were the artist Maud

in selling French impressionist and modern art in England at the time,

Burge and her husband, George, and Hodgkins was rather delighted when

so it’s an indication of Hodgkins’ growing status that it was prepared to

George promptly took up watercolours, thinking him possibly more

take her on. Even so, she wrote to Howell to express her sorrow, having

skilled than his wife.

felt the security of being one of the ‘St George’s family’, and noted that

2

she had eight canvases which she couldn’t wait to show him on her

98

Hodgkins_TXT_MV2.2.indd 98-99

99

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described the event in great indignation, for at a time ‘when the Republic is in need of all its little citizens I thought it unduly severe. His father is a consumptive architect entrusted with the building of 15 churches in the devasted regions. Think of it. Better be drowned than disfigure poor

I

wonder what she would have thought had she lived long enough to see St Tropez’s mid-century transformation after Brigitte Bardot made it famous. Still, it remains a place dedicated to the sea, its vessels merely

smarter than the simple wooden fishing boats she was familiar with.

beautiful France with horrible little churches — assuming he was as bad

When Hodgkins first arrived there from Martigues the weather wasn’t

an architect as he was artist.’1

good enough to paint out of doors, so she produced a number of ink

She doesn’t give a name to the hotel from this first stay in St Tropez,

drawings which she sent off to Arthur Howell, promising watercolours as

possibly because she already knew she would be moving on. A photograph

soon as the storms abated and the sun came out. A month later she sent

of the time shows the unpaved quai, where fishing nets were piled high

off two batches of the desired works, now much gayer in colour, hoping

or laid out to dry and fishing boats were hauled up beneath rough houses,

that he would be pleased with them.

almost all without plaster.

Dorothy Selby had sent her the latest news and reviews from England,

Hodgkins returned to St Tropez in April 1931 after spending some time

and in her reply Hodgkins captured the ennui that can creep over you in

in Martigues. She wrote to her friend Dorothy Selby: ‘St Tropez is very

a Mediterranean summer: ‘Barling would love this place in summer. The

attractive but to be avoided in July–August when it is more of a disease

gay cafés & the colour & movement. It is a wicked little spot while the hot

from all I hear — Margate at its worst. Already the Hotels are packed. Such

weather lasts. One sits in a café, watches — talks — scandal — surmises. I

types. The young & goodlooking approaching as near Nudism as they

think I am the only one in St Tropez who really works hard!’3

dare — wh is pretty near. Lucky for me I have re-found an old friend & her

Throughout this time, Hodgkins kept a keen eye on the political

husband who have a villa here — with a jolly garden next door to Signac’s

situation in Europe, aware of the marked effect this was having on

villa. She is very keen on painting in an amateur way & arranges & collects

people’s incomes and investments. The Burges had been forced to sell

still life & flowers for me wh we do in the cool garden. I spend most of

their Hampshire home and their cars after their portfolio of stocks

my day up there. On Sundays we take lunch & spend the day in the Cork

and shares lost much of its value, and by renting the villa in St Tropez

Forests — very shady & cool & select — not a soul in sight. So the heat is

they could live more cheaply while also avoiding paying income tax.

supportable. Mosquitoes not too devouring — yet.

Hodgkins was extremely alarmed to discover that the financial crisis had

‘What do you plan for your holiday? Is Barling joining on with you this

driven Arthur Howell to close St George’s, although he had taken good

year? Sep. should be very jolly here & the worst of the crowd thinned out.

care of her interests by organising a contract with the Lefevre Gallery,

But perhaps too hot for you. There is always a sea breeze. I intend stopping

with whom she was to show for the rest of her career. Lefevre’s, which had

on as I am doing good work & life down here is simpler & cheaper than

opened in King Street in St James’s, London, in 1926, was at the forefront

elsewhere & that is an item with me.’ Her friends were the artist Maud

in selling French impressionist and modern art in England at the time,

Burge and her husband, George, and Hodgkins was rather delighted when

so it’s an indication of Hodgkins’ growing status that it was prepared to

George promptly took up watercolours, thinking him possibly more

take her on. Even so, she wrote to Howell to express her sorrow, having

skilled than his wife.

felt the security of being one of the ‘St George’s family’, and noted that

2

she had eight canvases which she couldn’t wait to show him on her

98

Hodgkins_TXT_MV2.2.indd 98-99

99

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return, even though he might no longer be able to exhibit them.

Just as her earliest visit had seen her move in bold new directions in her drawings, so her stay in St Tropez was to produce an entirely new range of paintings, which nonetheless carried echoes of her earlier forms. One of the exhibition watercolours produced during this period in the south (as opposed to the more rapid sketches that she used as starting points in later paintings) was Girls with a Jug (Fig. 10), previously thought to have been done in Ibiza, but more likely a response to her time spent in St Tropez in 1931. (Ibizan girls were still wearing traditional costume when she was there from 1932 to 1933.) It shows two girls almost merging with a large ceramic water or oil jug, a frilly pedestal dish wittily supporting a tilted dish of eggs between them. The girls have crucifixes around their necks, giving the work the kind of devotional mood also seen in one of her most sophisticated and complex paintings, Spanish Shrine (see page xx), which she painted over several years after staying in Ibiza.

As it was, her St Tropez paintings took a while to reach the public. Red Jug (Fig. 11) was included in the eleventh exhibition of the Seven & Five Society at the Leicester Galleries in 1932; Cut Melons (Fig. 12) was shown at Zwemmers, London, the same year; and a small selection appeared in the Seven & Five Society exhibition at the Leicester Galleries in February 1933. This included Two Plates (Fig. 13) and Evening (Fig. 14). Each in its way has proved vital in dating other works, because Hodgkins invariably worked through particular motifs, sometimes retaining them for long periods, and discarding them only when they no longer served as aidesmemoire to a particular landscape.

The cool and shady cork forests that she mentioned in her St Tropez letters appear in two watercolours, Red Earth and Landscape, South of France, as well as a number of oil paintings in which they are reduced to single trees, standing like sentinels in the landscape and easily identified by their stripped bark. The trunk beneath is a soft, wounded pink when first exposed, fading to a duller colour once the bark starts to regrow. This motif stands apart from the crooked Y-shaped ‘twigs’ Hodgkins used to ABOVE Source

Name, Details.

Hodgkins_TXT_MV2.2.indd 100-101

101

12/12/2018 18:03

return, even though he might no longer be able to exhibit them.

Just as her earliest visit had seen her move in bold new directions in her drawings, so her stay in St Tropez was to produce an entirely new range of paintings, which nonetheless carried echoes of her earlier forms. One of the exhibition watercolours produced during this period in the south (as opposed to the more rapid sketches that she used as starting points in later paintings) was Girls with a Jug (Fig. 10), previously thought to have been done in Ibiza, but more likely a response to her time spent in St Tropez in 1931. (Ibizan girls were still wearing traditional costume when she was there from 1932 to 1933.) It shows two girls almost merging with a large ceramic water or oil jug, a frilly pedestal dish wittily supporting a tilted dish of eggs between them. The girls have crucifixes around their necks, giving the work the kind of devotional mood also seen in one of her most sophisticated and complex paintings, Spanish Shrine (see page xx), which she painted over several years after staying in Ibiza.

As it was, her St Tropez paintings took a while to reach the public. Red Jug (Fig. 11) was included in the eleventh exhibition of the Seven & Five Society at the Leicester Galleries in 1932; Cut Melons (Fig. 12) was shown at Zwemmers, London, the same year; and a small selection appeared in the Seven & Five Society exhibition at the Leicester Galleries in February 1933. This included Two Plates (Fig. 13) and Evening (Fig. 14). Each in its way has proved vital in dating other works, because Hodgkins invariably worked through particular motifs, sometimes retaining them for long periods, and discarding them only when they no longer served as aidesmemoire to a particular landscape.

The cool and shady cork forests that she mentioned in her St Tropez letters appear in two watercolours, Red Earth and Landscape, South of France, as well as a number of oil paintings in which they are reduced to single trees, standing like sentinels in the landscape and easily identified by their stripped bark. The trunk beneath is a soft, wounded pink when first exposed, fading to a duller colour once the bark starts to regrow. This motif stands apart from the crooked Y-shaped ‘twigs’ Hodgkins used to ABOVE Source

Name, Details.

Hodgkins_TXT_MV2.2.indd 100-101

101

12/12/2018 18:03

ABOVE Source

Name, Details.

Hodgkins_TXT_MV2.2.indd 102-103

ABOVE Source

Name, Details.

12/12/2018 18:03

ABOVE Source

Name, Details.

Hodgkins_TXT_MV2.2.indd 102-103

ABOVE Source

Name, Details.

12/12/2018 18:03

suggest pruned olive trees from the late 1920s until she returned from Spain in 1936. One gouache, only recently identified in Hereford County Council’s collection, Still Life with Vase and Eggs (Fig. 15), shows an elegant jar with a folding lip, the main body swelling out beneath a slender neck before curving in to a pedestal base. While it rests on the folded cloth that she used to animate both surface and object in paintings of this time, here it is overshadowed by a larger piece of cloth spilling stiffly out of the neck of the vase like a matador’s cape, accompanied by a tight spray of pink and white flowers.

A single stemmed cup and a cluster of eggs rest at its base, and silhouetted against a washed sky are two trees that stand on the horizon either side, one with the twisted shape of a cork tree, the other less clearly defined. Animated, sculptural twists of fabric weave their way through oil paintings such as Red Jug, Green Urn (Fig. 16) and Spanish Still Life and Landscape, winding around what appears to be a residual pergola or rising up of their own accord, adding a dynamism to the composition.

However, the titles of Hodgkins’ oil paintings can’t be relied on as verification of the location, not least because some were not finished until she had been to Ibiza in 1932–33. In the background of Spanish Still Life and Landscape, for example, there is a group of tall buildings, structurally similar to those in Pastorale, which we know developed from her stay at La Gaude in 1930. They appear in quite a number of her paintings, including Evening, creating what she called that ‘white note’ that draws the eye into deep space, in the same way as Constable before her had added a dab of red among his greens and browns.

A

fter Mary and I had wandered round the market St Tropez, we set off up the hill to find La Hune, the large house acquired by Paul Signac in 1897. He transformed it into the pink gem it is today,

with its frieze of glossy deep-green edging tiles meandering across and above each of the windows on the upper floor and arching over the simple

ABOVE Source

Name, Details.

Hodgkins_TXT_MV2.2.indd 104-105

105

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suggest pruned olive trees from the late 1920s until she returned from Spain in 1936. One gouache, only recently identified in Hereford County Council’s collection, Still Life with Vase and Eggs (Fig. 15), shows an elegant jar with a folding lip, the main body swelling out beneath a slender neck before curving in to a pedestal base. While it rests on the folded cloth that she used to animate both surface and object in paintings of this time, here it is overshadowed by a larger piece of cloth spilling stiffly out of the neck of the vase like a matador’s cape, accompanied by a tight spray of pink and white flowers.

A single stemmed cup and a cluster of eggs rest at its base, and silhouetted against a washed sky are two trees that stand on the horizon either side, one with the twisted shape of a cork tree, the other less clearly defined. Animated, sculptural twists of fabric weave their way through oil paintings such as Red Jug, Green Urn (Fig. 16) and Spanish Still Life and Landscape, winding around what appears to be a residual pergola or rising up of their own accord, adding a dynamism to the composition.

However, the titles of Hodgkins’ oil paintings can’t be relied on as verification of the location, not least because some were not finished until she had been to Ibiza in 1932–33. In the background of Spanish Still Life and Landscape, for example, there is a group of tall buildings, structurally similar to those in Pastorale, which we know developed from her stay at La Gaude in 1930. They appear in quite a number of her paintings, including Evening, creating what she called that ‘white note’ that draws the eye into deep space, in the same way as Constable before her had added a dab of red among his greens and browns.

A

fter Mary and I had wandered round the market St Tropez, we set off up the hill to find La Hune, the large house acquired by Paul Signac in 1897. He transformed it into the pink gem it is today,

with its frieze of glossy deep-green edging tiles meandering across and above each of the windows on the upper floor and arching over the simple

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door on the street front. He built a vast studio at one end, faced with a

dense trees, a setting far scruffier than the manicured views you find

very large lunette window that takes up much of the first floor and gives

online today. But luxurious accommodation can’t protect you from the

spectacular views of the hinterland leading up to the Alpes Maritimes.

elements, and Selby was unlucky to strike the ‘seering shrivelling black

The street now bears his name, Avenue Paul Signac, in recognition of the

Provençal wind’ that has no respect for rich or poor, and Hodgkins

economic boom that came as a result of his presence. The house abuts the

assumed she had found it difficult to draw. She herself had managed just

narrow pavement, which may not have been sealed when he first moved

a few drawings. With Mussolini not far away across the border, the threat

in. Across the road, the land slopes steeply upward towards ridged pine

of war made her feel very insecure — a feeling that was to linger when she

trees before dropping down towards the sea.

returned to England.

Identifying the Burges’ house next door, where Hodgkins had stayed, was another matter. The one immediately to La Hune’s left looked likely, but had been built only recently, according to a local man of whom we enquired, and now there was another building hard up against its back boundary. A steep lane leads back towards the village immediately after you pass La Hune, and the house the Burges rented could have been been any of these; but in the absence of any signs of the pretty garden where Hodgkins and Maude Burge painted we finally had to admit defeat. However, to compensate for our frustration, we discovered on our way back to the port later in the day that the door of the Musée de l’Annonciade was ajar. We had about 20 minutes before the little ferry that we were taking across the harbour to St Raphael departed, so dashed indoors and were not disappointed.

Hodgkins returned to St Tropez for the last time during a brief holiday in March 1939. She stayed with her friend Ree Gorer at the Hôtel Sube, which had been her accommodation on earlier visits, and discovered that she had missed Dorothy Selby by just a few days. She wanted to know whether Dorothy had sailed across to St Tropez from Le Beauvallon, a hotel located on the other side of the bay. The hotel is one of the great belle époque palaces on the Riviera, and was wildly expensive even then; it was certainly way above Hodgkins’ budget. Mary and I hoped that she at least called in for a cocktail in its enormous salons, even if she could not afford to stay.

In the 1930s the vast hotel stood back from the sea surrounded by

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door on the street front. He built a vast studio at one end, faced with a

dense trees, a setting far scruffier than the manicured views you find

very large lunette window that takes up much of the first floor and gives

online today. But luxurious accommodation can’t protect you from the

spectacular views of the hinterland leading up to the Alpes Maritimes.

elements, and Selby was unlucky to strike the ‘seering shrivelling black

The street now bears his name, Avenue Paul Signac, in recognition of the

Provençal wind’ that has no respect for rich or poor, and Hodgkins

economic boom that came as a result of his presence. The house abuts the

assumed she had found it difficult to draw. She herself had managed just

narrow pavement, which may not have been sealed when he first moved

a few drawings. With Mussolini not far away across the border, the threat

in. Across the road, the land slopes steeply upward towards ridged pine

of war made her feel very insecure — a feeling that was to linger when she

trees before dropping down towards the sea.

returned to England.

Identifying the Burges’ house next door, where Hodgkins had stayed, was another matter. The one immediately to La Hune’s left looked likely, but had been built only recently, according to a local man of whom we enquired, and now there was another building hard up against its back boundary. A steep lane leads back towards the village immediately after you pass La Hune, and the house the Burges rented could have been been any of these; but in the absence of any signs of the pretty garden where Hodgkins and Maude Burge painted we finally had to admit defeat. However, to compensate for our frustration, we discovered on our way back to the port later in the day that the door of the Musée de l’Annonciade was ajar. We had about 20 minutes before the little ferry that we were taking across the harbour to St Raphael departed, so dashed indoors and were not disappointed.

Hodgkins returned to St Tropez for the last time during a brief holiday in March 1939. She stayed with her friend Ree Gorer at the Hôtel Sube, which had been her accommodation on earlier visits, and discovered that she had missed Dorothy Selby by just a few days. She wanted to know whether Dorothy had sailed across to St Tropez from Le Beauvallon, a hotel located on the other side of the bay. The hotel is one of the great belle époque palaces on the Riviera, and was wildly expensive even then; it was certainly way above Hodgkins’ budget. Mary and I hoped that she at least called in for a cocktail in its enormous salons, even if she could not afford to stay.

In the 1930s the vast hotel stood back from the sea surrounded by

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