above: Frances Hodgkins, Old Port Douarnenez, 1921.
The Field Collection is a collection of 44 works, 24 of them paintings by Frances Hodgkins (1869–1947), considered New Zealand’s most significant expatriate artist. It is the largest collection of Hodgkins’ work outside Te Papa Tongarewa and city collections in Dunedin, Auckland and Christchurch.
The Field Collection has a national reputation and is the subject of regular requests for loans for exhibitions by other institutions, and study access from scholars and art historians from within New Zealand and overseas.
The collection originates in Frances’ sister Isabel marrying William Field and settling in Waikanae. Frances used the word ‘ancestral’ when writing about Waikanae. She visited and painted there during her lifetime and her ashes, when returned from Britain, were interred in the family plot in Waikanae—once the Field family farm.
Within this core of twenty-four works is found the essential early Frances Hodgkins from which her later work would spring. As a collection these paintings should never be underestimated for what they reveal to us about the nature of her beginnings as an artist, her complex relationship with her family, especially her sister Isabel, and the artistic taste of New Zealand during her lifetime.
This collection of forty-four artworks is unique in that it offers not only an insight into Frances Hodgkins’ work but also provides an opportunity to consider the art milieu which nurtured her. The collection also reveals the personalities and on-going commitment to art of a single family during a time-span of over a hundred years.
Avenal McKinnon, Frances Hodgkins: The Link with Kapiti: The Field Collection, Mahara Gallery, 2000
Works in the Field Collection can be viewed Tuesday–Thursday by appointment. Please visit the Collections page to learn more.