89aware of. Wide appeal is not necessarily incompatible
with intellectual heft and there are those of us who
would have liked to have seen a little less travelogue,
and quite a lot more art history and stylistic analysis.
I suspect Hodgkins would have agreed. As she
commented, approvingly, on the draft of Myfanwy
Evans’ text on her for the Penguin Modern Painters
series: ‘She has kept the artist well in front of the
human being.’^9
Two other small exhibitions have been staged to
mark the 150th anniversary; one curated by Pamela
Gerrish Nunn for Waikanae’s Mahara Gallery
which also held a Hodgkins Study Day, the other at
Auckland dealer Jonathan Grant Gallery. European
Journeys will tour to Christchurch Art Gallery,
Wellington’s Adam Art Gallery and Dunedin Public
Art Gallery (presumably this is why the latter, so
long connected to Hodgkins’ history, marked her
birthday on 28 April with nothing more than a cake).
Why Te Papa did not immediately put its hand up
as a venue is beyond me. That failure demonstrates
how far off the mark our national museum continues
to be when it comes to mounting a credible visual
arts programme; and what a missed opportunity to
showcase one of our greatest artists to Te Papa’s many
international visitors.
One last gripe: I know from experience that
exhibition-specific merchandising helps to fund
high-cost shows like this but a sour note has been
sounded by designer Karen Walker’s appropriation of
several of Hodgkins’ paintings for her own products.
Her scarves and bags, the original images ‘framed’
with large spots and childish scribbly lines, are
dubious enough (Spanish Shrine on a sponge bag is
so inappropriate!) but the reproduction on blouses
of Bridesmaids and Two Children (in each case using
four figures instead of the original two) is a hideous
travesty of these fine paintings. Hodgkins’ work is,
even in English law, now out of copyright but that is
no excuse for the Auckland Art Gallery’s complicity in
this misguided commercial venture.- In recent times, most frequently by Dunedin Public Art Gallery
which, for some years, had a dedicated Frances Hodgkins gallery,
and Mahara Gallery, Waikanae, which has access to the Field family
collection of works by Hodgkins and others associated with her. - Also of significance is Roger Collins’ research on Hodgkins’ visits
to France; some of the many vintage postcards he has collected of
key sites are on show in vitrines. - Frances Hodgkins, letter to Isabel Field, 23 September 1921, in
Linda Gill (ed.), Letters of Frances Hodgkins, Auckland University
Press, Auckland 1993, p. 354. - ‘Art, Frances Hodgkins’, supplement to The Bookfellow, Sydney,
1 May 1913, pp. 9–10, cited in Elena Taylor, ‘Encountering the
Modern: Paris 1908–12’, in Catherine Hammond & Mary Kisler
(eds), Frances Hodgkins: European Journeys, Auckland University
Press, Auckland 2019, p. 84. - Frances Hodgkins, letter to John Piper, 19 October 1941, in Linda
Gill, op. cit., pp. 518–19. - Frances Hodgkins, letter to Miss Harmston (assistant to her dealer
Arthur Howell), 14 April 1931, in Linda Gill, op. cit., pp. 439–40. - Frances Hodgkins, letter to Karl Hagedorn, 29 January 1933, in
Linda Gill, op. cit., p. 456. - Frances Hodgkins, letter to Duncan Macdonald, 10 February
1936, in Linda Gill, op. cit., pp. 469–70. - Frances Hodgkins, letter to Katharine West, 4 April 1943, in Linda
Gill, op. cit., p. 535.