Seascape for Frank, Xmas 95

Artist: William Mathew Hodgkins (1833—1898)
Date: 1895
Place: Dunedin
Media: watercolour on grey watercolour sketchboard
Dimensions: 130 × 180 mm
Catalogue number: 2023–1–32
Credit line: The Field Collection, Toi Mahara

This seascape is an example of William Mathew Hodgkins’ sketches from nature. In a lecture given to the Otago Institute on 20 November 1880, he described the New Zealand coastline as ‘…most varied in character—here long stretches of sandy beach, flanked by dreamy-looking headlands; there bold and beetling cliffs hanging high above the surge…’ (Peter Entwistle, Nerli: an exhibition of paintings and drawings, 1988, p160).

Hodgkins often made colour notes for his paintings in sketchbooks: ‘…the sea rolling in and only the tops of the rollers seem grey with green, grey emerald – near shore broken yellow and red wet sand.’ (Hodgkins Family Album, Alexander Turnbull Library, E-312-q-1).
(Sourced from notes by Avenal McKinnon, Frances Hodgkins, the link with Kapiti: The Field Collection, Mahara Gallery, 2000).