111localinformants,andserendipitous
encounters. This first-person
commentary, interspersed through
much coverage of cultural milieu and
artist biography, is characterised by
candour, humour and enthusiasm. The
paintings and drawings reproduced
are not just the artist’s representations
of physical ‘place’, but extend to
still-life (without landscape referents),
textile designs, figure compositions
and portraits.
Hodgkins’ varied approaches are
signalled by the stimulating book
design by Kate Barraclough and
Megan van Staden. The sprightly,
oxygenated 1933 drawing Road to the
Hills, Ibiza wraps around the book,
the rich tonal gradations of The Red
Jug (c.1931) glow beneath, alongside
a detail of the far-from-arcadian,
glowering La Pastorale (c.1929–30).
The book begins a little wanly
with very brief accounts of Hodgkins’
time and sketches of around 1901 in
Caudebec-en-Caux, and Les Andelys
and Dinan. A much longer chapter
on Hodgkins’ exciting period in the
Maghreb follows, and features The
Orange Seller (1903). A teasing reference
is skipped over: the artist told the
Sydney Morning Herald: ‘ I look back
upon my visit to Morocco as the
real starting point to all my work.’
The author, who had not the time
to retrace Hodgkins’ steps to North
Africa, cites her own trip to Moroccan
caves in 1976: ‘I was forced to keep
up quite a pace to avoid our guide
who insisted on pinching my bottom
every few metres.’ In Nice, which was
not always nice, Kisler encountered ‘a
terrible pop-art reproduction of a pair
of bloated red lips’ at an ‘Art Hotel’,
and accidentally dropped her bra out a
hotel window.
The narrative often echoes the high
velocity contained in Hodgkins’ letters.
The artist’s brilliant authorial voice has
long been a big part of her posthumous
reputation, somewhat to the detriment
of visual analysis. Kisler’s frequent use
of these entertaining extracts supports
the biographical dimension implied in
the book’s title, but the fresher enquiry
into tangible visual catalysts is diluted
as a result.^ Kisler’s ‘detours’ have
much of interest, however. The chapter
on St Ives and Penzance is typically
full of colourful anecdote, the flavour
of Hodgkins’ milieu and contemporary
personalities around her. Laura
Knight offended local sensibilities
with her imagery of nude local boys.
Kisler’s research photographs reveal
Hodgkins’ St Ives abode at the light-
filled Porthmeor studios overlooking
the water. In 1915, it was forbidden
to sketch outdoors due to increased
wartime security; Hodgkins turned to
portraits.
While sleuthing in Bodinnick,
Cornwall, Kisler searched for the
artist’s room, ‘the Nook’, with her
iPad of images in hand. The ‘“local
art historical consultants” proppingup the bar’ reasonably decided the
very room the author had booked
was the vantage point represented
in Bodinnick Cornwall (1931–32),
which relates to her Wings over Water
paintings. Interestingly, Te Papa
contextualises the visionary Ruins of
1937 with Hodgkins’ stay at Worth
Matravers, Dorset. It represents ‘the
Isle of Wight and the Needles on the
horizon’.^2 Kisler, however, argues the
structures echo masonry in the ruined
cottages she sighted around the coastal
mine at Abereiddi, Pembrokeshire,
Wales—‘That solved one part of
the puzzle.’ In Martigues, ‘Venice
of Provence’, a famous fishing port
which had long attracted many artists,
including Augustus John and New
Zealander John Weeks, Kisler ‘found
the exact spot where Hodgkins had
painted Venetian Lagoon’. (The artist
may have been fighting for elbow-
space.) A punchy photograph would
have nicely underlined this find. In
Cassis, Kisler identified ‘The Crown
of Charlemagne’, the distinctive
landform that appears in Hodgkins’
assured, often-pulsating drawings. In
the St Tropez section, the author notes
her tree motifs: the cork-tree and olive
tree, with its ‘Y-shaped twigs’. These
animate many of her landscape/still-
lifes; the cork tree substantially so in
the exhibition catalogue’s Poet Resting
Under a Tree of c.1932–33.
In Ibiza, Kisler thoughtfully
channels the past: the ‘olfactory
overlays of drying fish... and drains,
as well as the rising and falling sound
of the community’. The imposing
vision of Monastery Steps (1933–35)
with its dynamic road winding up
the picture plane is compared with
Ibizan vernacular, cubic architecture
of the Dalt Vila. It is, she says: ‘a
telling demonstration of how an artist
transforms the literal into a creative
refinement’. Hodgkins’ obvious
imaginative facility and formal
decision-making means judgements
on the artist’s visual sources should be
made cautiously.
A stronger editorial input would
have insisted on a punchier, cogent
selection of supporting images, culled
excess and smoothed inconsistencies.
However, thanks to Kisler’s drive
and networking skills, more precise
information on Hodgkins’ life, motifs
and output is now available, including
works previously unknown to
researchers.- This and other quotes and references
have been taken from Mary Kisler, Finding
Frances Hodgkins, Massey University Press,
Auckland 2019. - See: http://collections.tepapa.govt.nz/
object/37462.
(opposite) FRANCES HODGKINS
Monastery Steps 1934–35
Oil on canvas , 584 x 702 mm.
(Private collection)
(below) FRANCES HODGKINS
Venetian Lagoon c.1921
Watercolour, 799 x 832 mm.
(Private collection)