Date: 1889–1893
Place: Dunedin
Media: pastel on card
Dimensions: 458 × 400 mm
Catalogue number: 2023–1–31
Credit line: The Field Collection, Toi Mahara
Although unsigned, this portrait of Isabel Hodgkins displays the characteristic dash of Girolamo Nerli’s pastel technique in the treatment of the model’s lace blouse. An inscription attached to the back reads ‘Portrait of Isabel Hodgkins, after age 19’, which places it between 1886 and 1893, when Isabel married, changing her name to Isabel Field. Girolamo Nerli visited New Zealand first late in 1889 and returned in 1893 so there were two opportunities for him to have drawn Isabel. It could be the pastel portrait by Nerli lent by William Mathew Hodgkins to the Otago Art Society’s 1893 exhibition, about which the Evening Star of 13 November noted, ‘A pastel sketch lent by Mr Hodgkins is clever and extremely pretty, albeit the prettiness is somewhat unnatural, and the modelling of the cheek is not good.’ (Sourced from notes by Avenal McKinnon, Frances Hodgkins, the link with Kapiti: The Field Collection, Mahara Gallery, 2000).
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