Frances Hodgkins - The Expatriate Years
Frances Hodgkins is regarded as one of New Zealand’s most renowned artists. Her works capture the spirit of an era greatly influenced by Impressionism and the beginnings of en plein air painting, Post-Impressionism, Fauvism and two World Wars. With a professional life that spanned fifty-six years, Hodgkins was one of the foremost artists of her generation. During her time in Britain she became one of the leaders of the English avant-garde during the 1930s and 1940s, and was one of the first New Zealand-born artists to achieve such stature.
Born in Dunedin on the 28 April 1869 to the distinguished watercolourist William Mathew Hodgkins and his Australian wife, Rachel Owen Parker, Frances Hodgkins’s artistic education continued outside the sphere of influence of her family. In 1893 she studied with the renowned expatriate artist Girolamo Pieri Nerli, (1860 -1926) who encouraged her in portraiture and figure painting, and then from 1895-96 she attended Dunedin School of Art.
Having left New Zealand for Europe in 1901, Hodgkins finally settled in England in 1913, where she spent most of her time in London. She took it upon herself to further her career in Europe and Britain by holding regular exhibitions of her work and becoming one of the first female teachers at the prestigious Académie Colarossi in Paris. Hodgkins toured around Normandy & Picardy with her group of students, sketching in the villages of Concarneau, Le Havre and St Valery-sur-Somme. It was on these teaching trips that Hodgkins met and befriended some of her most loyal companions, one of the most significant of which was Jane Saunders. Hodgkins first met Saunders and her partner, Hannah Ritchie, in 1911 at Concarneau and friends such as this pair, continually supported her throughout her life. Saunders and Ritchie also collected a number of major works by Hodgkins, some of which are exhibited in this collection. Hodgkins continued to paint and teach and hold regular sketching classes in France until the outbreak of the First World War (1914 -1918).
