2000
Frances Hodgkins – The Link with Kāpiti: The Field Collection
19 February–29 April 2000
Curator, Avenal McKinnon
Frances Hodgkins – The Link with Kāpiti: The Field Collection is the first ever exhibition of the forty-four artworks that comprise the Field Collection. Housed privately in Paraparaumu for many years the collection comprises a core group of twenty-four works by Frances Hodgkins. It includes works which range from rapidly executed family comment to fully worked masterpieces, revered family treasures and paintings left from exhibitions which failed to sell. The Field collection spans three generations. There are paintings by her father William Mathew Hodgkins together with the works which he collected by the artists John Gully, Edmund Goldsmith and Girolamo Nerli. Alongside the works of Frances Hodgkins are paintings by her sister Isabel Field and their contemporaries, James Nairn and Dorothy Kate Richmond and an important group of works by Petrus van der Velden. There is a commissioned sculpture by Lorna Ellis of Peter Field, Isabel’s son, who kept the collection together and acted as its guardian. The Field collection is unique in that it offers not only an insight into Frances Hodgkins’ work but also provides an opportunity to consider the art milieu that nurtured her.
The exhibition was funded by the Pharazyn Trust, the New Zealand Festival 2000, Kāpiti Coast District Council, Virginia Turner, an anonymous donor, the Waikanae Community Board and the Wellington Community Trust.
RELATED EVENT
A dramatisation of the life of Frances Hodgkins. Looking Back On Frances, was performed in association with the exhibition. The play which followed the course of Hodgkins’ painting life, evolved at a workshop run by Briar Grace-Smith with input from a range of writers including Linda Gill and Avenal McKinnon.
PUBLICATION
Frances Hodgkins – The Link with Kāpiti: The Field Painting Collection is a fully illustrated catalogue of the exhibition of the same title. Essays by Avenal McKinnon and Peter Trim; Designed by Lindsay Missen; Published by Mahara Gallery, Waikanae, 2000.
Essay: Frances Hodgkins and the link with Kapiti – Peter Field, his aunt and his family – Peter Trim. (906KB PDF)
2008
Frances Hodgkins – Her idea of heaven: Selected Paintings, 1895–1921
1–30 March, 2008, as part of the New Zealand International Arts Festival 2008
Frances Hodgkins is New Zealand’s most acclaimed early 20th century painter, and the Waikanae-based Field Collection of Hodgkins’ work is of legendary importance. This exhibition spans Frances Hodgkins’ iconic early portraits to her 1920s’ experimental years.
Related exhibition SERAPHINE PICK – AFTER IMAGE
1 March–27 April, 2008
Séraphine Pick is a Wellington-based artist who was born in Kawakawa, Bay of Islands in 1964. Over the last 20 years her paintings and drawings, in an always shifting range of styles, have explored memory, mythologies, subjectivity, relationships and territories of the imagination. Among many other awards she held the Frances Hodgkins Fellowship at the University of Otago in 1999.
2010
Frances Hodgkins: Kāpiti Treasures
28 February–2 May, 2010, as part of the New Zealand International Arts Festival 2010
Curator, Janet Bayly
Frances Hodgkins: Kāpiti Treasures reflects the special relationship that the Kāpiti district has with New Zealand’s most famous and best-loved expatriate artist, Frances Hodgkins (1869-1947), through work gathered together for the first time from several significant private Kāpiti collections.
Mahara Gallery has developed a special connection to Frances Hodgkins (1869-1947), arguably New Zealand’s most famous and best-loved expatriate artist. Her sister Isabel Hodgkins married Willie Field, Member of Parliament for Otaki. The family had several farms on the Kpiti Coast and Frances Hodgkins’ ashes now lie in the family plot in Waikanae Cemetery. This new exhibition marks 10 years since our first major exhibition of her work and that of her sister Isabel Field, father William Mathew Hodgkins and some of their key contemporaries, which was curated by Avenal McKinnon: Frances Hodgkins, The Link to Waikanae, The Field Collection.
One decade on, Frances Hodgkins and the Field Collection are now considered an essential part of the cultural heritage of Kāpiti. Frances Hodgkins, Kāpiti Treasures further honours the real affection felt for the artist here. It extends the Field Collection, which concentrates on earlier work by Frances Hodgkins up until the early 1920s, with later works loaned from other private Kāpiti collections. Belonging essentially in the private domain, it will be the first time this work has been seen together. The artworks are very much the treasures of the people who live with and love them.
Frances Hodgkins, Kāpiti Treasures spans every decade of her work from the 1890s until the 1940s. It shows her development from an accomplished colonial painter of portraits and genre scenes into a mature and uniquely individual artist engaged with European modernism in the first decades of the 20th century. Frances Hodgkins became highly regarded as a British artist, with a sell-out retrospective show at Lefevre Galleries the year before her death in 1947, the culmination of many years of struggle, sacrifice and poverty. As Avenal McKinnon commented in her Sesquicentennial exhibition of Hodgkins’ work ‘the single minded pursuit of her vision had triumphed.’
PUBLICATION
Frances Hodgkins: Kāpiti Treasures is a fully illustrated catalogue of the exhibition of the same title. Edited by Janet Bayly with an essay by Jetta Cornish. Introduction by Janet Bayly; Acknowledgments by John Mowbray; Photography by Paddy Riley Photography; Design and layout by Mission Hall Creative; Printing by Thames Publications; Funded by the Deane Endowment Trust and the Lion Foundation.
RELATED EVENT
Double Portrait: Finding Frances Hodgkins
A play, Double Portrait- Finding Frances Hodgkins, by Jan Bolwell, directed by Ralph McAllister and presented by Handstand Productions was performed in association with the exhibition.
2013
Frances Hodgkins and the Field Collection in Kāpiti: Selected Works
This is a series of smaller exhibitions highlighting different aspects of the Field Collection, which will change regularly at Mahara Gallery from May 12, building momentum and public interest up to the presentation on the entire Field Collection of 44 works as part of the NZ International Festival of the Arts 2014.
Frances Hodgkins and the Field Collection in Kāpiti: Selected Works 1
April 28
Curator Janet Bayly
The first mini-exhibition is a one day showing of the works as part of the celebration of Frances Hodgkins’ birthday on 28 April, as part of a Mayoral event at Council Chambers.
Works
- Frances Hodgkins, A Fortune Teller 1896
- Frances Hodgkins, Summer Joys 1916
- Frances Hodgkins, Old Port, Douarnenez 1921
- Isabel Field, Lagoon at Waikanae 1913
Frances Hodgkins and the Field Collection in Kāpiti: Selected Works 2
May 12–June 30, 2013
Curator, Janet Bayly
Works
- Frances Hodgkins, Sisters 1906
- Petrus van der Velden, Dutch Girl Carrying a Cradle c1874
- Isabel Field, Irises 1891
- Attrib. Girolamo Nerli, Oval Portrait of Isabel Hodgkins
Frances Hodgkins and the Field Collection in Kāpiti: Selected Works 3
July 7–September 1, 2013
Curator, Janet Bayly
Works
- Frances Hodgkins, Goose Girl 1905
- Isabel Field, Ngarara Lagoon, Waikanae [after 1893]
- Petrus van der Velden, Fishing Board and Steamer c1870
- Edmund T. Gouldsmith, Mt Sefton 1887
Frances Hodgkins and the Field Collection in Kāpiti: Selected Works 4
September 8–November 24, 2013
Curator, Janet Bayly
Works
- Frances Hodgkins, Maori Girl Seated c1903-5
- James Nairn, Happy Valley 1899
- Isabel Field, Lagoon at Waikanae 1913
- John Gully, Takatimo (sic) Mountains, Manapouri Station 1887
Frances Hodgkins and the Field Collection in Kāpiti: Selected Works 5
November 30, 2013–February 23, 2014
Curator, Janet Bayly
Works
- Frances Hodgkins, Boy, Girl and Dog 1891
- Frances Hodgkins, Summer Joys 1916
- Dorothy Kate Richmond, Woman Diving 1927
- Petrus van der Velden, Fishing Boats and Steamer c1870
2014
Frances Hodgkins in Kāpiti: The Field Collection
1 March–20 April, 2014
Curator, Janet Bayly
An exhibition of the entire Field Collection of forty-four works for the New Zealand Arts Festival 2014. It is only the second public showing of this legendary family collection spanning two generations in over 100 years.
PUBLICATION
A new catalogue featuring essays by Linda Gill, Peter Trim and original Field Collection curator Avenal McKinnon, alongside full colour reproductions of all the works accompanies the exhibition. Funded by the Deane Endowment Trust.
Essay: ‘Some notes on the twenty-four pictures by Frances Hodgkins in the Field Collection’ by Linda Gill. (1.6MB PDF)
Summer Classics: Frances Hodgkins, D.K. Richmond, Petrus Van der Velden, Girolamo P. Nerli
21 December, 2014–1 February, 2015
Curator, Janet Bayly
Summer Classics features five paintings loaned by Avenal McKinnon to Mahara Gallery for two years. They have a particular relationship to the Kāpiti-based Field Collection, and are joined here by Goose Girl (Large Goose Girl), 1905 which is a key work in that collection.
Two stunning Frances Hodgkins’ works: Dutch Woman Reading, 1906 and Gardening [with Girlie] 1904/1913 (?) both show the influence of her exposure to two European painters Petrus van der Velden and Girolamo Nerli in her Dunedin art school studies in the 1890s, and her subsequent travels in Europe in the first decade of the twentieth century.
Works
- Frances Hodgkins, Dutch Woman Reading 1906
- Petrus van der Velden, Study of a Dutch Woman in Black nd.
- D. K. Richmond, Girl Reading [Alice Beretti as model] 1904
- Girolamo P. Nerli, Portrait of a Young Sailor nd.
- Frances Hodgkins, Gardening [with Girlie Field] 1904/1913 (?)
- Frances Hodgkins, Goose Girl 1905
2015
A Winter Sampling: Frances Hodgkins and the Field Collection
30 August–27 September, 2015, as part of the New Zealand Festival of the Arts 2015
Curator, Janet Bayly
A Winter Sampling features two paintings by Frances Hodgkins, a landscape by her sister Isabel Field of Ngarara Lagoon, Waikanae, which her husband Will Field farmed, two portraits of Isabel and a painting by Petrus van der Velden. One portrait of Isabel is by Frances Hodgkins, and the other is attributed to Italian painter Girolamo P. Nerli, who taught Frances Hodgkins in Dunedin in the 1890s.
These paintings are all part of the Field Collection Trust, which has been held in Kāpiti since Isabel moved north to Wellington after marrying Will Field in 1893.
Frances Hodgkins became one of New Zealand’s best loved expatriate artists of the 20th century.
The photograph of her in the Bowen Street studio (actually a disused horse stables) which she set up with fellow artist Dorothy Kate Richmond, includes the painting now known as The Algerian Girl on the wall behind her. This painting is now in the Field Collection, and included in this exhibition.
The sixth work here, by Dutch painter Petrus van der Velden, has been loaned to Mahara Gallery for the next two years by Avenal McKinnon, but was originally also in the Field Collection along with 12 other paintings by this artist.
Petrus van der Velden was a Dutch painter arrived in New Zealand in the 1890s and had an influence on the development of a ‘New Zealand’ art, in particular through his expressive treatment of landscape. Netherlands and becoming
Works
- Girolamo Nerli (attrib), Oval Portrait of Isabel Hodgkins 1889-93
- Frances Hodgkins, Isabel Jane Field 1895
- Isabel Field, Ngarara Lagoon, Waikanae [after 1893]
- Frances Hodgkins, Street Scene 1901
- Frances Hodgkins, Algerian Girl c1904
- Frances Hodgkins, Dutch Woman Seated
Focus on Frances Hodgkins
7 November, 2015–17 January, 2016
Curator, Janet Bayly
Focus on Frances Hodgkins explores this much-loved New Zealand artist’s paintings of family and children, her travels in Morocco and Brittany, and includes a work by her artist and friend D.K. Richmond’s view of the New Zealand summer. Also included for context is a Petrus van der Velden painting of a fishing boat and steamer.
Wrapped inside these works is the bigger story of the Field Collection which has been located in Kapiti for over a hundred years. This ‘priceless’ art collection originated with Dunedin lawyer and amateur artist William Mathew Hodgkins, father of the artists Frances Hodgkins and Isabel Field (nee Hodgkins). Petrus van der Velden was one of numerous international artists whom William Mathew Hodgkins supported and introduced to the Dunedin art community of the 1880s and 1890s, then the leading art centre for New Zealand.
Alongside van der Velden, the young Frances Hodgkins was also introduced to the work of James Nairn and Girolamo P. Nerli, whose paintings are also in the Field collection. When van der Velden later lived in Wellington, William Field, who had by then married Isabel, acquired more of his work. These professional international artists were important to Frances Hodgkins’ own development and may have helped propel her towards Europe herself.
We are very grateful for the support of the Field Collection Trust and Avenal McKinnon for the loan of these works.
Works
- Frances Hodgkins, Boy, girl and dog 1891
- Frances Hodgkins, Street in Tetuan 1903
- Frances Hodgkins, Lady in Blue 1891
- Frances Hodgkins, Gardening [with Girlie Field] c1904/1913
- Frances Hodgkins, Baby [after Marie Seymour Lucas’s Tyrant] 1891
- Frances Hodgkins, Old Port, Douarnenez 1921
- Petrus van der Velden, Fishing Boat and Steamer c1870
- Dorothy Kate Richmond, Woman Diving 1927
- Frances Hodgkins, The Market, Tangiers 1904
2016
Frances Hodgkins & Petrus van der Velden in the Field Collection
26 February–3 April, 2016
Curator, Janet Bayly
There remain many gaps and ellipses in the unfolding story of the Kāpiti-based Field Collection of forty-four works, including twenty-four by, or attributed, to Frances Hodgkins and seven by Petrus van der Velden. The impact of van der Velden, a well-established European artist, on the development of landscape painting in New Zealand art has been well canvassed. His genre studies and portraits seem also to have resonated strongly in Frances Hodgkins’ visual memory and early work.
Hodgkins recalls van der Velden on her first trip to Europe when she spent the summer of 1903 in Holland, and met someone who knew him well. 1 From 1907 –8 she then spent a full year there, based in Dordrecht, and as usual visited numerous art collections, including the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Her letters briefly record her familiarity with the artistic heritage of Dutch art: ‘We spent all day with the pictures – ancient and modern, & saw many of my old friends again.’ 2 Hodgkins also enjoyed the environment: ‘there never was a more beautiful country for atmosphere – I love Holland & I will leave with many regrets.’ 3
Writing to her mother Rachel, Hodgkins described herself as ‘a worshipful little admirer‘ 4 of Rembrandt, who died in 1669 two hundred years before Frances Hodgkins was born. Petrus van der Velden arrived in Christchurch in 1890 when Hodgkins was 21 and just embarking on her own artistic journey.
Surviving financially posed the same challenge for all three artists across the centuries, however. In 1907 Hodgkins argued her case to sell a ‘Rembrandt Head’, part of the family inheritance from their father, artist William Mathew Hodgkins. ‘ – I hate suggesting this & I know the family wont like the idea but you will easily realise that it is better for me to have the money I may possibly get from the sale so as to enable me now, this year to make a last stand & rally in Europe before I come back to you all – .’ 5 Finally brother Bert relented and sent the drawing, only for it to realise no value, probably because its authenticity was doubtful.
William Mathew Hodgkins was a significant art patron in 1890s Dunedin and supported Petrus van der Velden both publicly and privately. Frances would have been able to study his work at close quarters. A ‘relaxed’ portrait of William Mathew by van der Velden hung in their Dunedin homes along with other works now in the Field Collection.6 Hodgkins curator Avenal McKinnon has suggested it looks more like a casual image of a friend than a formally commissioned portrait. 7
One can also imagine William Mathew, an enthusiastic amateur painter, finding Petrus van der Velden deeply impressive company. He came to New Zealand as ‘an artist in his prime, who enjoyed a sound reputation in a major centre of art’. 8 ‘Vincent van Gogh, who met van der Velden in 1883, described him as ‘a real artist’ and ‘a solid, serious painter’. 9 Hodgkins was influential in the purchase of van der Velden’s Waterfall in the Otira Gorge 1893 and Old Jack 1893 for the Otago Art Society exhibition ultimately for the collection of the new Dunedin Public Art Gallery which he helped to found. Frances Hodgkins ‘painted her own version … of Old Jack in a work called An Old Salt 1900’ and McKinnon suggests ‘it is probable that many of her studies of old age at this time were inspired by van der Velden’s use of this subject matter.’ 10
The Hodgkins’ family art collection had begun with William Mathew’s own collecting of regional and international artists he supported and promoted. It included his own paintings and works by his daughters Isabel and Frances. After a gradual family relocation north to Wellington / Kāpiti following Isabel’s marriage to Will Field in 1893 and William Mathew’s death in 1898, the collection expanded to include further paintings by Isabel – mainly Kāpiti landscapes – and works by Frances sent back from Europe for exhibitions or gifted to family. It also acquired more works by van der Velden who had resettled in Wellington from Sydney sometime after 1904.
Avenal McKinnon believes the watercolour painting Dutch woman reading 1906, which she has loaned for this exhibition was probably painted in the Bowen Street studio Hodgkins shared with Dorothy Kate Richmond that year. 11 The subject reflected her recent year in Holland, but perhaps also her awareness of van der Velden’s studies of Dutch peasant women. The painting later went into the Pharazyn collection, so named as Hodgkins’ niece Lydia had married Captain Noel Pharazyn, but those works were all eventually sold.
The van der Velden oil painting Study of a Dutch Woman in Black (nd), also loaned for this exhibition by Avenal McKinnon, took the same route through the family collection into the Pharazyn collection before becoming privately owned. It is closely allied with the very similar Dutch woman carrying a cradle c1874 which remains in the Field Collection. These women belong to the North Holland environment which Hodgkins, in a 1907 letter home, describes van der Velden reflecting in his paintings. 12
- Avenal McKinnon, Frances Hodgkins, The Link with Kapiti, The Field Collection, Mahara Gallery, 2000, p46
- Linda Gill (ed.) Letters of Frances Hodgkins, AUP, 1993, p210 [150]
- ibid. p212 [151]
- ibid. p215 [153]
- ibid. p204 [144]
- Avenal McKinnon, p45. This portrait was later gifted from the Pharazyn Collection to the Hocken Library.
- ibid. p45
- T.L. Rodney Wilson in Van der Velden, Otira, Te Puna O Waiwhetu, Christchurch Art Gallery, 2011, p11
- Dieuwertje Dekkers in Van der Velden, 2011, p17
- McKinnon, p46
- Personal communication, 2014
- Gill, p234 [176]
Works
- Petrus van der Velden, Study of a Dutch Woman in Black n.d
- Frances Hodgkins, Portrait of an Old Man August 1896
- Petrus van der Velden, Dutch Boats in Canal
- Frances Hodgkins, Dutch Woman Reading 1906
- Frances Hodgkins, Hill Town
RESEARCH
In 2016 the Field Collection received extra scholarly attention for the previous three months through VUW Summer Student Scholar, Simon Gennard, funded by grants from Victoria University Wellington and the Deane Endowment Trust. He examined aspects of the collection in more depth, organised research materials in the archive, interviewed the Field Trustees and wrote an essay for Mahara’s NZ Festival publication Everywhere is an Elsewhere.
PUBLICATION
Simon Gennard, Janet Bayly, Everywhere is an Elsewhere, Mahara Gallery,2016.
Published by Mahara Gallery in 2016 in association with the exhibition Frances Hodgkins & Petrus van der Velden in the Field Collection, 26 February – 3 April 2016.
RELATED EVENTS
Renowned art historian and Hodgkins specialist Pamela Gerrish Nunn started a specially commissioned series of illustrated talks on themes in Hodgkins’ work which began in June and ran through till August 2016.
Frances Hodgkins and Girolamo P. Nerli: Early years
new SPACE
26 August–9 October, 2016
Curator, Janet Bayly
In these three early paintings by Frances Hodgkins and two by Girolamo P. Nerli (1863-1926) we can see the beginnings of Frances Hodgkins’ expressive approach to colour and increasingly free way of handling watercolour paint.
Nerli was a lively professional Italian painter who came to New Zealand in the late 1880s, initially to set up the New South Wales Court at the New Zealand and South Seas exhibition of 1889. Nerli’s portrait of Isabel appears on the wall in a photograph of Frances Hodgkins taken at their Dunedin home, Cranmore Lodge, where the Hodgkins family lived from 1889-1897. At the time it was labelled ‘Portrait of Isabel Hodgkins, after aged 19’ which places it between 1886 and 1893, when Isabel married, changing her name to Isabel Field.’
‘The association with Nerli, although brief, was an important one for the Hodgkins family. Not only did they collect and promote his work, but were also stimulated by his teaching and his direction towards figure painting and portraiture, which played a decisive role the development of Frances Hodgkins.’ Avenal McKinnon catalogue notes in Frances Hodgkins, the Link with Kapiti, the Field Collection, Mahara Gallery, 2000.
Hodgkins’ painting A Fortune Teller (The Fortune Teller) 1896, conveys an element of the ‘exotic’ which Avenal McKinnon suggests hints at Nerli’s influence. He tutored her at the Dunedin School of Art where she became a student at the age of 26. (The delicate Chinese-style cup in this painting is also displayed here).
Works
- Girolamo P. Nerli, Oval Portrait of Isabel Hodgkins 1889-1893
- Frances Hodgkins, A Fortune Teller 1896
- Girolamo P. Nerli, Portrait of a Sailor Boy 1891
- Frances Hodgkins, The Market, Tangiers 1904
- Frances Hodgkins, Dutch Woman Reading 1906
2017
An emerging talent, early works by Frances Hodgkins
9 April–4 June, 2017
Curator, Victoria Robson
An emerging talent, early works by Frances Hodgkins charts the development of Frances Hodgkins’ early work through 21 works which span 1890 to 1913, the year of her final visit to New Zealand.
Several paintings here are loaned from the Field Collection which holds 24 artworks by Frances Hodgkins.
We are also very grateful to Hodgkins’ curator Avenal McKinnon who has loaned four artworks related to the Field Collection.
A further nine early Hodgkins’ works have been loaned by several private lenders related to the Field family. These include major paintings which have not been shown publically for sixty or more years. They add to our collective knowledge of Frances Hodgkins’ early development. Her core interests and unique approach to colour are evident in this early work and remained central as she developed an increasingly experimental voice which was not readily accepted by New Zealand audiences. She was later recognized as a leading artist in the British avant-garde.
PUBLICATION
Victoria Robson, An emerging Talent, Early works by Frances Hodgkins, Published by Mahara Gallery 2017 with the support of the Deane Endowment Trust and Wellington Amenities Fund; edited by Janet Bayly, designed by Amanda Smart, printed by The PrintRoom, Paraparaumu.
Essay: An emerging talent, early works by Frances Hodgkins – Victoria Robson (3.7MB PDF)
2018
Frances Hodgkins, 3 works, 3 decades
new SPACE
27 October–9 December, 2018
Curator, Janet Bayly
This sampling of work over three decades indicates some of the key interests and themes that Frances Hodgkins revisited throughout her career between the early 1890s to the early 1940s. These included women in individual portraits and group settings, and outdoor settings such as markets where she would work quickly in an expressive and adventurous way.
The Market, Tangiers conveys the galvanising effect that a 1903 trip to North Africa had on her, with its exuberant colour and visually excited response to the vivid scene.
The more sombre and subtle second work, The Black Scarf (Maori Woman’s Head), is thought to have been the last portrait Hodgkins painted on her final trip home to New Zealand between 1912 and 1913, after which she stayed permanently In Europe. Her strong attraction to Maori women as subject matter began early in her work and continued after she had leftNew Zealand. In 1902 she wrote that she was ‘…more than ever set on painting Maoris & the thought that I am going back to a whole island full of them gives me infinite comfort – they are still to me so much more beautiful than anything I have seen on this side of the world…’ (1) This portrait was represented on the cover of E.H. McCormick’s book Works of Frances Hodgkins in New Zealand, 1954. Thethird work, Women at Market, (Market Scene, Six Women), shows the degree to which her painting had developed away from her earlier more descriptive and conventional style towards a tougher, more abstracted form ofmodernism. This image is one of a group of five paintings from 1920/21 which Hodgkins sent back from Europe in the hope of selling them to NewZealand buyers. But as she wryly observed in a letter home, her work had become ‘a bit too modern’ for New Zealand tastes. (2) They remained unsold (and therefore stayed in the family collection) and she stopped sending work home after that. This group thus forms the final and interesting snapshot of Hodgkins’ development as an artist through the Fieldcollection.
1. Letter to Rachel Hodgkins 8 July 1902 (Linda Gill, Letters of Frances Hodgkins, AUP, 1993 p 131)
2. Letter to Rachel Hodgkins 14 April 1921 (Linda Gill, Letters of Frances Hodgkins, AUP, 1993 p 353)
Works
- Frances Hodgkins, Market in Tangiers 1903
- Frances Hodgkins, The Black Scarf 1913
- Frances Hodgkins, Women at Market 1921
Frances Hodgkins – Family & Friends
new SPACE
15 April–3 June, 2018
Curator, Janet Bayly
Frances Hodgkins – Family & Friends features art made by Frances Hodgkins (1869-1947) and four other artists important in her life and artistic development.
These were her father William Mathew Hodgkins (1833-1898), a passionate amateur painter who was also a dedicated art patron and significant figure in the development of the arts in Dunedin; her older sister Isabel Jane Field
(1867-1950) who painted landscapes and still life in an attractive traditional style; her colourful Italian tutor Girolamo P. Nerli (1860-1926), who became close to the Hodgkins family, who collected and promoted his work, while he played a decisive role in Frances Hodgkins’ development; and her dear friend and fellow traveller-artist in Europe, Dorothy Kate Richmond (1861-1935).
This small exhibition also spans her early years. It includes a painting by her father of Ravensbourne House, Dunedin, where Frances Hodgkins grew up; a study of two children which is the earliest dated work by Frances Hodgkins in the Field Collection, made when she was 22 using local family friends as models; and a watercolour portrait she made of her sister two years after Isabel married Wellington lawyer Will Field.
The Hodgkins family roots shifted from Dunedin to Wellington after William Mathew died in 1898 and Frances left for her first trip to Europe in 1901. The new family nexus developed around their mother Rachel who had also moved to Wellington, and Isabel, Will and their five children. Frances remained strongly connected to her family for the rest of her life, even after she remained in Europe from 1913 until her death in 1947.
The third Frances Hodgkins painting in this show depicts a young girl in a late summer New Zealand garden. It is thought to represent her niece Girlie, Isabel’s eldest daughter. It is not known if the garden is in Wellington, where the Fields had a house on The Terrace, or Kāpiti, where they had several farms.
The landscape by Isabel Field depicting Ngarara Lagoon and Kāpiti Island behind clouds was probably painted on their farm, also named Ngarara.
The ashes of Frances Hodgkins now lie nearby in a Hodgkins/Field family plot on a knoll in Waikanae Cemetery, which was originally part of Ngarara Farm.
Works
- William Mathew Hodgkins (attrib.) On the Manuherikia, Otago (nd)
- William Matthew Hodgkins, Ravensbourne, Dunedin (nd.)
- Frances Hodgkins, Boy, Girl & Dog 1891
- Girolamo P. Nerli, Portrait of a Sailor Boy (nd)
- Frances Hodgkins, Isabel Jane Field 1895
- Isabel Field, Ngarara Lagoon Waikanae after 1893
- DK Richmond, Girl Reading [Alice Berreti as model] 1906
- Frances Hodgkins, Gardening [with Girlie Field] (c1904/1913?)
A girl called Alice
5 August–16 September, 2018
Curator, Janet Bayly
Alice Berreti was fourteen when she was painted by Frances Hodgkins. She lived at Pudney Farm with her parents, which was in Paraparumu near the railway line.
My Father was Italian and passed on to me red hair. I thought it was awful. One day, Willie Field’s sister in law Frances Hodgkins and friend Dorothea Richmond came to Paraparaumu for a Holiday. They saw my red hair thought it was beautiful and asked me to sit for them so they could paint me. I used to carry their paints and easels. The painting she did for me was named “Babette’, it was put in the academy and won a prize. I was born in 1891, and came to live in Paraparaumu in 1896. We lived in a house by the ramp – we had 2 acres of land to farm. But my father was a fisherman first. When he gave that up he worked on the roads until he died in 1912. We had lovely dances in Wise’s hall. My father used to play the accordion. My mother grew all the fruit for jam making, apples, pears, peaches. We had cows for our own milk supply. George Hamilton Grapes came from England. He grew all kinds of fruit including grapes. He used to stop the train, board it then sell bags of fruit to passengers.
From ‘Olive Baldwin, The Celebration History of the Kāpiti district, 1988’
Frances Hodgkins also painted Alice for The Goose Girl (Large Goose Girl, 1905) and this has become a key work in the Field Collection, which has been offered to Mahara Gallery as its permanent collection. The other painting made of Alice, Babette, is now in the collection of the Dowse Art Museum, Lower Hutt.
The house where Frances and her friend Dorothy Kate Richmond stayed on their painting holidays still exists, and the ashes of Frances Hodgkins rest with other members of her family in Waikanae Cemetery. The story of Alice has become part of the bigger art story of Frances Hodgkins, who became New Zealand’s most famous expatriate artist after leaving New Zealand finally in 1913 and making her reputation and career in Europe, but never lost her affection for Kāpiti.
RELATED EVENTS
Sitting for Frances
Sitting for Frances is a short film directed by Kevin Ramshaw for the Mahara Gallery Trust, launched at Mahara Gallery on Tuesday 21 August 2018.
The film tells the little-known story of Alice Berretti, a 14 year old local girl whose portrait was painted by Frances Hodgkins in 1905. Goose Girl (Large Goose Girl) 1905 is now a much loved painting in the Field Collection.
The film is another all-local production, shot and edited by Te Kupu, Kia Kaha Productions directed by Mahara Trust Board member Kevin Ramshaw, with music by Phil Simmonds, and features Red Capewell, daughter-in-law of Alice Capewell, Te Korenga Lemmon as the young Alice, and Mahara director Janet Bayly.
2019
Frances Hodgkins, from Dunedin to Waikanae
28 April–16 June, 2019
Curator, Pamela Gerrish Nunn
This exhibition celebrates the 150th anniversary of the birth of Frances Hodgkins, New Zealand’s most celebrated expatriate artist. Frances Hodgkins, from Dunedin to Waikanae focuses on little-seen works drawn from private lenders and public collections. The curator is Dr Pamela Gerrish-Nunn, a specialist in Hodgkins’ work.
Talent and ability do not necessarily lead to recognition. To gain a reputation, an artist has to make a career out of her talent and ability. This is what Frances Hodgkins (1869-1947) spent most of her adult life trying to achieve; it was a pursuit that led her back and forth across the world. So, while it can be said that she began in Dunedin and ended in Waikanae, the track she took between the two was lengthy and tortuous.
One hundred years after her birth, this exhibition follows Frances Hodgkins on that journey, from her family home to her eventual fame. Through a selection of little-known works, it invites the viewer to understand how her varied pictures came to be as they are, created as they were at this or that place on her route and at this or that time in her life. Art is shaped, much more often than we might suspect, by circumstance; and Frances Hodgkins was nearly always subject to circumstance, having no home of her own and an unpredictable and inadequate income. Each of her paintings, then, hints at the conditions under which it was made and the aims that the artist was able to entertain at that point. A sociable person, she made a social art, and her works tell also of the particular corner of life that they sprang from.
Some of these works will surprise, some of them will confirm expectations, but together they offer a succinct tour round Frances Hodgkins, that redoubtable New Zealand artist.
PUBLICATION
Pamela Gerrish Nunn, Frances Hodgkins, From Dunedin to Waikanae Exhibition catalogue
Essay: A social history of Frances Hodgkins – Pamela Gerrish Nunn (572KB PDF)
RELATED EVENT
In connection with the exhibition Frances Hodgkins, from Dunedin to Waikanae, Mahara Gallery are offering a special study day on Sunday 19 May, from 1 pm – 5 pm at the Waikanae Community Centre, Utauta Street, Waikanae.
Expert speakers will include Professor Charlotte MacDonald, Professor of History at Victoria University of Wellington, Elizabeth Eastmond, former lecturer in Art History at the University of Auckland and Victoria Robson, former curator of International Art at Te Papa.
Charlotte Macdonald, who has written extensively on women and gender, especially 19th New Zealand, will explore Dreams of the New Zealand born generation: lives in the late 19th century muddy colonial alleys.
Elizabeth Eastmond, who has curated exhibitions and published widely on Frances Hodgkins and other New Zealand women artists, will explain the intriguing You will find the slipper if you hunt for it. Frances Hodgkins, shoes and the self.
Victoria Robson, now an independent researcher and curator, will discuss Frances Hodgkins’ place in New Zealand art.
The event is being supported by the Deane Endowment Trust and Creative Communities Kāpiti. Entry on the day is by folding koha. The Gallery will be open from 11 am for attendees to view the exhibition.
2020
Frances Hodgkins & the Field Collection
5 September–31 October, 2020
Curator, Janet Bayly
The Field Collection has been held in Kāpiti for over 100 years and contains 24 works by renowned expatriate New Zealand artist Frances Hodgkins (1869-1947). The collection began with her father William Mathew Hodgkins (1833-1898) in Dunedin, and includes his paintings and those of her sister Isabel Field (1867-1950), and six other important New Zealand and international artists.
The Field Collection spans 26 years of Frances Hodgkins’ development as an artist who extended the medium of watercolour from conventional to modernist artworks, and whose work reflected her life as a journeying woman artist. Te Atiawa ki Whakarongotai, led by Wiremu Parata Te Kakakura, tribal leader and later MP for Western Maori, are the tangata whenua of this rohe and part of their whenua became known as the Ngarara Block during colonial era land transactions and acquisitions. Isabel Hodgkins, the elder sister of Frances, married Kāpiti lawyer, European landowner, and later MP for Otaki, Will Field, in 1893, and they established a farm at Ngarara in Waikanae.
The locus of the Hodgkins family moved north from Dunedin to Kāpiti and Wellington after William Mathew’s death in 1898, and the family collection of artworks came with them. After Frances Hodgkins first left Dunedin for Europe in 1901 the family collection gradually expanded with artworks she sent back or left here from two visits between 1903-06, and 1912-13.
The first painting in this exhibition, Ngarara Lagoon, Waikanae, 1893, was made by Isabel Field in her first year in Kāpiti. It presents the outlook from Ngarara Lagoon towards Kāpiti Island. The Hodgkins and Field family headstone sits on a small knoll that was on their Ngarara farm and is now part of Waikanae Cemetery. Frances Hodgkins made several visits to and loved this farm. The view of Kāpiti Island from the farm became a favourite late memory of New Zealand from her location in Cornwall, England. Frances Hodgkins’ pen and ink drawing Bearded Old Man, 1896, was made in Dunedin while Hodgkins was developing her skills in order to teach and make a living as an artist. She first left New Zealand in 1901 to continue developing in the wider international setting, and began a life of almost continual journeying which informed and influenced her development as an artist from then on. This is explored in depth by curator Mary Kisler in Finding Frances Hodgkins, 2019, and Frances Hodgkins: European Journeys, 2019. The latter book and exhibition is now showing at the Adam Gallery, Victoria University of Wellington, including Dye Yards (The Dyer’s Courtyard), 1903, from the Field Collection. Frances Hodgkins made one of several visits to the Field family farm while back in New Zealand between 1903 and 1906. One of these visits was during a painting trip with Dorothy Kate Richmond (who is also included in the Field Collection). Maori Girl Seated, 1905, was painted in Rotorua on this trip.
Frances Hodgkins’ work in the Field Collection spans the conventional but expressive portrait of Isabel made in 1895, to a modernist market scene in 1921 exploring a radically different approach to image-making and watercolour. It is part of the last group of works that Hodgkins had sent to Isabel and Will to manage in New Zealand for exhibitions and potential sales. She didn’t send any more work after this because she felt it ‘has become a bit too modern’ for New Zealand tastes. 1.
Frances Hodgkins first developed her interest in painting women in seaside and Maori settlements near Dunedin, and later repeated this in small villages and market towns in North Africa and across Europe. Algerian Girl, 1903 relates to her first travels to the northern hemisphere but also seems to be closely connected to the portraits of Maori women she continued making until 1913. It appears on her studio wall in the background of a photographic portrait of the artist posed self-consciously at her easel in Bowen Street, Wellington, c1905. Sisters (Mother and child), 1906, painted after she arrived back in Frances, extends her ongoing focus on women and children in her painting over several decades. It also displays the influence of French painting, and impressionism in particular, on her work. Frances Hodgkins’ last visit to New Zealand was a brief final stop in 1913 following a triumphant series of sell-out shows in Australia. The leap across fifteen years from Sisters to The Rag Market, Douarnenez, Finistere, Brittany (Market Scene with Carts), (Market Scene) 1921, also painted in France, indicates the huge developments made in her work against the equally huge challenges of World War 1, the Spanish flu, and the economic and personal hardships of surviving as a single, older woman artist.
After their mother’s death in 1926 Frances Hodgkins wrote to Isabel that by burying Rachel Hodgkins here rather than in Dunedin ‘you have made Waikanae ancestral’ 2. Hodgkins’ ashes were located by her biographer E.H McCormick in Dorchester, England, some years after her death in 1947. They were utlimately interred with Rachel, Isabel, Will and other family here in Waikanae Cemetery.
The Field Collection has been offered as a gift to the people of Kāpiti, to be freely accessible as a public collection of national and international significance, with Mahara Gallery as its permanent final home.
We are deeply grateful to the Field Collection Trust for their ongoing generosity and support in loaning works from their collection until we achieve the redevelopment of the present gallery building to international museum standards. We also gratefully acknowledge the strong support of the Deane Endowment Trust and their interest in Frances Hodgkins and the Field Collection.
Janet Bayly, Curator
1. Letter to Rachel Hodgkins, 14 April 1921, Linda Gill (ed.) Letters of Frances Hodgkins, Auckland University Press, 1993, p.353)
2. (Letter to Isabel Field, Gill, p.395).
Works
- Frances Hodgkins, Sisters 1906
- Frances Hodgkins, The Rag Market, Douarnenez, Finistere, Brittany 1921
- Isabel Field, Ngarara Lagoon, Waikanae after 1893
- Frances Hodgkins, Isabel Jane Field 1895
- Frances Hodgkins, Bearded Old Man 1896
- Frances Hodgkins, Algerian Girl 1905
- Frances Hodgkins, Maori Girl Seated c1903-1905
RELATED EVENT
Sunday 11 October 2020, 4–6pm Special event in Frances Hodgkins & the Field Collection. Mary Kisler, Curator of Frances Hodgkins: European Journeys will talk about Frances Hodgkins’ travels. Friends of Mahara free, guests of Friends $20 as a contribution to the Mahara Gallery redevelopment project.