Date: 1903
Place: Morocco
Media: watercolour on paper
Dimensions: 282 × 201 mm
Catalogue number: 2023–1–12
Credit line: The Field Collection, Toi Mahara
In a letter to Dorothy Kate Richmond Frances Hodgkins described the Moroccan scenes she was painting: ‘It seems to me near perfection as needs be for a sketching ground…I…have struck out on a new line and am painting wonderful little shops aglow with colour under the shadow of vine pergolas supported by long spidery props, the whole emphatically repeated in clear purple on the pavement. It is very Japanesy, and Mortimer Menpes figures flit about in filabs of radiant hue…The whiteness and pearliness of the town simply defies you—you can’t get it pure and brilliant enough…Cubes and domes are the general outline of things and the intoxicated pergola props take off the stiffness of things to help out compositions and foregrounds in a wonderful way.’ (Linda Gill, Letters of Frances Hodgkins, 1993, p157).
(Sourced from notes by Avenal McKinnon, Frances Hodgkins, the link with Kapiti: The Field Collection, Mahara Gallery, 2000).