Bearded Old Man

Artist: Frances Hodgkins (1869—1947)
Date: August 1896
Place: Dunedin
Media: pen and ink on paper
Dimensions: 290 × 217 mm
Catalogue number: 2023–1–07
Credit line: The Field Collection, Toi Mahara

The identity of this sitter is not known, but he was also the subject of a watercolour study, Greybeard (E H McCormick no. 78). The date August 1896 places this work at the precise time Frances Hodgkins advertised herself as a teacher with a studio in View St, Dunedin. She had completed two years of study at the Dunedin Art School. E H McCormick noted that ‘Frances Hodgkins had learned the lesson of concentration…there is not much that could be dismissed with the label “student exercise”; a few pen and ink drawings might be classed as such, but they are certainly from the hand of a highly talented student’. (Sourced from notes by Avenal McKinnon, Frances Hodgkins, the link with Kapiti: The Field Collection, Mahara Gallery, 2000).