An Artist Discovered

New Zealand Listener, Volume 26, Issue 667, 18 April 1952, Page 12

An Artist Discovered

FRANCES HODGKINS, FOUR VITAL YEARS, by Arthur R. Howell; Rocklift. English price, 16/-.

(Reviewed by

E. H.

McCormick

that throws light on the career of Frances Hodgkins, and I read this book with intense interest. The author, who was Miss Hodgkins’s dealer in the late twenties and early thirties, reveals with surprising candour the methods he used to launch this "unknown" artist on the London art world. Most of us have a rough idea of what goes on in building up a reputation, but it is rare to have the process explained so circumstantially. Having said so much, Mr. Howell might have said a little morewhat the artist was paid for her work, for instance, and what output was expected of her under the terms of her contract. The book does not, however, touch on the cruder aspects of commerce: Mr. Howell, speculator in a twofold sense, has a taste for aesthetic and semiphilosophical pondering which he also attributes to Miss Hodgkins. On very slender evidence, he constructs a theory that in her practice as an artist she was déeply influenced by J. S. Bach. I confess I do not follow all the subtleties of the argument, and I find the appropriate comment in Mr. Howell’s own words: "Apart from the importance of drawing attention to Miss Hodgkins’s work, what, up to now, have all the words of interpretation written on it contributed to its appreciation?" In spite of a suggestion in Mr. John Piper’s foreword, I doubt whether Mr. Howell’s purpose was, in any strict sense, biographical. But from remarks of his own and from_ the letters he quotes it is possible to construct a picture of Frances Hodgkins during this phase of her life. There is dignity as is grateful for anything

well as pathos in the spectacle of this woman of. sixty, proud, stoical, undemanding, "although at times almost without the means of living"; or, when Mr. Howell last visited her, painting by electric light in a room whose "bare floor held only a piece or two of furniture." And, disclosing an abyss, she herself writes: "I simply cannot face living alone in any house at the present moment. . . Having had so much of it in the past I know its horrors. . ."’°Mr. Howell has. printed the letters. with scrupulous fidelity ‘to the text, and it is ungracious to lament that so gifted a letter-writer should make her first published appearance as the author of these crabbed, banal notes scribbled in haste, usually about business affairs. Even here there are flashes of wit or imagination and hints of mild malice: "not even a fly settles on me-but ‘sometimes a butterfly"; "a blue day like a cake of cobalt"; "an inspired plumber" (of Leger). Appendices include a brief chronology, not always accurate, and lists of works which might form the basis of a catalogue raisonné if some disinterested scholar were prepared to spend ten years and a fortune in compiling it. Amongst eight illustrations are four paintings reproduced in colour. Perhaps the most notable of these is "Tanks, Barrels and Drums" (1937), depicting objects that appear in water-colours of the early nineties. Possibly a more fruitful field of investigation than the influence of Bach! The book is very well produced, and, one hopes, will initiate a series of monographs on the life of this remarkable woman, A NEW LIGHT : THE LAGOON AND OTHER STORIES, by Janet Frame; Caxton Press, Christchurch; 10/6. {Tt is probably quite right that this book, beautifully produced by the Caxton Press, should appear without a

blurb on the dust-jacket: stories of such rare quality can be their own recommendation: the reé viewer who is confronted by them may very well risk following the publishers’ lead, and limit himself to saying no more than will serve to emphasise their merits. There is very little of what is common experience for every New Zealander that hasn’t found its way into the: 24 stories: it is all theresoil, sea and sky, bird and beast, plant and flower, all seen and felt as though with dazzled wonder and delight for the first time. in human history: But it is from the New Zealanders themselves, or some. of them, that the stories mainly derive their piercing flavour of anguish and suffering. Perhaps one may say that in their entirety they seem to pose a

; momentous question: Can people ever be said to be truly at home when they can never quite decide whether it mightn’t be an advantage to be somewhere else? But in the meantime there is the brick bungalow to camp in-and beneath its tiles love grows timid and fearful, faith and hope eventually become pinned to the ticket in Tatts, the children develop the nervous tensions that may never be resolved in a lifetime, and the adults either sleep the mental sleep fram which there is no awakening, or suffer the emotional strangulation that is slow but sure, and as deadly as death. . . It is, I repeat, all there, all clearly rendered in language which, despite its simplicity of statement and rhythm, is the author’s own special creation. From now on our literature is the richer, and the author, Janet Frame, becomes one more light to help diminish the vast region of darkness by which we are all sur-

unded,

Frank

Sargeson