Boy, Girl and Dog

Artist: Frances Hodgkins (1869—1947)
Date: 1891
Place: Dunedin
Media: watercolour and pencil on card
Dimensions: 254 × 172 mm
Catalogue number: 2023–1–02
Credit line: The Field Collection, Toi Mahara

This is the earliest dated work in the Field Collection by Frances Hodgkins who showed her work publicly for the first time in 1890, having joined the Otago Art Society as a working member at the end of 1890. In 1891 when this genre piece was painted, Frances Hodgkins was twenty-two. While noted by E H McCormick as ‘stiff and self-conscious’ it nevertheless centres her attention upon the figure—a direction she would continue to explore throughout her life. Two other works are related to Boy, Girl and Dog. They are A Game of Marbles, 1891; a larger work incorporating the same models and a similar dog with three other children playing marbles before the same brick wall; and another untitled sketch in the Hodgkins Family Album 2 at the Alexander Turnbull Library (E-312-q) depicting the same two models beside the same brick doorway and wall, but in differing positions. Clearly Frances Hodgkins from the start worked ‘en serie’, tackling the same composition from different angles, working out its pictorial possibilities. While a conventional piece, there are passages in the paintwork which lift this painting above the ordinary—the sumptuous blacks with blue shadows, and the treatment of light falling freely from the hat brim on to the girl’s face. (Sourced from notes by Avenal McKinnon, Frances Hodgkins, the link with Kapiti: The Field Collection, Mahara Gallery, 2000).