GREATEST N.Z. PAINTER

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 740, 18 September 1953, Page 18

GREATEST N.Z. PAINTER

RANCES HODGKINS is generally considered to be. the most important painter New Zealand has produced, and there has been great interest in the exhibition of her works now on show in the Architectural Centre Gallery, ‘Wellington. Brought together from galleries and private collectors all over the ‘country by C. Millan Thompson, until recently secretary to the National Art Gallery, the collection of more than 30 works is the most comprehensive yet ‘shown in New Zealand, and gives most people their first opportunity to compare a good sample of her early work with some of her later paintings. The earliest work shown was done in 1897, when the artist was 28, and the

latest in 1937, There is nothing, unfortunately, from her last 10 years. The day after the exbibition was opened by Dr.. J.C. Beaglehole The Listener called on Stuart Maclennan, Director of the National Art Gallery, and recorded .some of his impressions.) His first, he said, and one that stayed with him, was that Frances Hodgkins was a master colourist. "The early works are all interesting though often restrained in colour. I could feel she had had the artist’s usual struggles with draughtsmanship and arrangement, and in both respects I could see indefinite passages. But I feel that from the beginning she never hesitated when it came to colour. Without looking at the dates onthe pictures you could trace her development through colour-it be-

comes more e, and often more intense, and more significant. Of course, colour» cant stand alone-it. must be associated -with shape--and as she developed "the shapes became more important and she used line to accent them, There’s a period when she: gives almost a suggestion of stained glass in her arrangement of _ shapes — and it’s interesting that some of the colours escaped from her patchwork and, as it were, floated free, as "though refusing to be organised. As she developed she showed also an increased interest in design. which was often unorthodox and daring, even doubtful; but colour always solved the problem." Mr. Maclennan said it was interesting that in one of the latest works in the exhibition, The Pleasure Garden (about 1937), the colour » completely dominated the structure; the sunflowers

in the foreground existed without any plant structure to support them-they were evoked by colour. In nature the great charm»of- colour was that it was always trangient-as in the life of a flower or im a@.sunset. Sometimes in the work of ;Frances Hodgkins, and in this exhibition particularly in The Pleasure Garden, she seemed to capture this quality. The colour seemed to have been breathed on to the paper, to have "happened all at once" so that it floated before you and was not pinned and confined: Turning to other works, Mr. Maclennan said that Threshing in the Cotswolds (1919) was, irrespective of date or period, a magnificent water coloura real concert piece-a brilliant piece of technique, obviously painted witha very little drawing beneath, and without an uncertain passage. Market at Concarneau (about 1927) was a wonderful example of lush wet water colour where somehow the subject didn’t mat-ter-there was the feeling of looking through colours rather than — through landscape. Sleeping Child (c. 1918) was very tenderly drawn, and a symphony in red, veridian and turquoise. In the lithograph Arrangement of Jugs red and green were again | the dominant colours, but here they flirted with yellow, blue

and brick red to create a-really impudent colour scheme.- Under the Pines (1931) was gay and "cheeky," too, with its merest suggestion of pines-a suggestion of a tree trunk with «a little bit of: texture-with a girl lying beneath. The drawing of the right arm was a remarkable passage of line work -about half a dozen strokes to express — the roundness of the arm, the twist and' the upturned. palm, Heres again the colour was remarkable; lolly pink and touches of .veridian with a hot brown would. be impossible to anyone but Frances Hodgkins. Commenting on the absence of any work of the last 10 years of the artist's life. Mr. Maclennan said that though Ruins (about 1937) ‘was one’ of the latest works shown, it was an excursion into the near-abstract which could never have satisfied Frances Hodgkins. Ruined Mine, Wales, painted about five . years’ earlier, gave a better indication of her later development. The work of her last ) !

years was more personal and showed | more of an inward .then an outward vision, but she never lost sight of sub-ject-everything was the result of a visual experience either seen or remembered. "In her earlier years Frances Hodgkins was interested in portraiture, and had quite a rare: gift of character," Mr. Maclennan said, "but in most of her later work in this exhibition human interest has disappeared. The painting of Miss Beatrice Wood (1918) shows that she might have been an outstanding portrait painter." ~Mr. Maclennan added that his personal view was that, Frances Hodgkins was essentially a water colour painter. Even in the portrait of Miss Beatrice Wood the oil paint had been applied thinly and transparent and had’ much of the quality of her water colours. Throughout the exhibition she proved that she was an absolute master of water colour technique; she had exploited every device and achieved a wenderful variety. of effects. (Mr. . Maclennan will discuss the Frances Hodgkins exhibition in Round the Galleries, his monthly -survey of current art exhibitions, to be heard in the 2YA Women’s Session on Tuesday; September 22.)