Frances Hodgkins

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Frances Mary Hodgkins (28 April 1869 - 13 May 1947) was a New Zealand Abstract Painter.

[edit] Life

Hodgkins was born in Dunedin, New Zealand in 1869, the daughter of W.M. Hodgkins a lawyer, amateur painter and principal figure in the city's art circles. After early success as a watercolourist she went on to become one of the leading artists of British Modernism. In 1904 Hodgkins became engaged to an Englishman, T. Boughton Wilby, after the briefest of courtships, and planned to go overseas to marry him, but the engagement was broken off at the last moment for unknown reasons.

Around 1901 she began a friendship with artist Dorothy Kate Richmond (1860-1935), whom she described as "the dearest woman with the most beautiful face and expression. I am a lucky beggar to have her as a travelling companion." [1]

The two likely met at the studio of painter Girolamo Nerli (G. P. Nerli), an itinerant Italian painter who taught Hodgkins and inspired her first successes. In 1903 she opened her own studio in Wellington, and in 1904 hosted a joint exhibition with Richmond. Among Hodgkins' pupils at her studio were artists Edith Kate Bendall, lesbian lover of Katherine Mansfield. Richmond was a great influence on the art of Hodgkins, although eventually their relationship faded to the point of nonexistance. She would become involved with other women of the time, but none that maintained the lifelong influence of Richmond.

Author E. H. McCormick would later write a biography of her, titled The Expatriate. Hodgkins is most admired for the freely painted works of her later life. She died in Dorchester, Dorset, in 1947.