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• Auction House:
  Webb's
• Sale Name:
  Important Paintings and Contemporary Art
• Sale Date:
  06 Dec 2011 ~ 6.30pm (NZ Time)
• Lot #:
  26
• Lot Description:
  Frances Hodgkins
  Frances Hodgkins – Still Life Thought to be painted in 1924 while the artist was working as a teacher at Manchester High School for Girls,
  watercolour on paper
  355mm x 400mm
  signed with artist's initials F.H. in brushpoint lower right
• Notes:
  Frances Hodgkins - Still Life Thought to be painted in 1924 while the artist was working as a teacher at Manchester High School for Girls, this untitled still life is a rare glimpse into the oeuvre of an artist whose practice was, at the time, going through rapid stylistic development. It presents itself as somewhat of a crossroads, mirroring the strategies that the artist used elsewhere in her practice of the time as well as consisting of aesthetic qualities that would feature heavily in the work that she would make in the latter stage of her career. In 1925 Hodgkins briefly took up work as a textile designer. Her image-making practice from 1922 to 1924 would have a very direct influence on her practice as a designer where she worked with flat angular planes of colour, creating abstract patterns and assemblages that had a figurative mandate. Prior to the outbreak of WWI in 1914, Hodgkins was based in mainland Europe and worked between Italy and France. However, the advent of war forced her to move to the small town of St Ives in Cornwall and it was during this period that the artist would begin to experiment with working in oil paints as opposed to the watercolours with which she was accustomed. From this time until the year of 1924, her work would increasingly engage with analytic cubism and, in relation to such works, this still life serves as an important statement of her intent. When Hodgkins was working in oils, it was particularly dry paint that she favoured; it was a stiff medium that would wear the texture of the bristle and had a stubborn opacity. In contrast, watercolour was a flat, fluid medium that left a sharp line and, while oil paint allowed Hodgkins to indulge in a modernist tendency to create works that documented their own making, this still life shows Hodgkins examining the potential of breaking down and reassembling shards of reality in a very direct manner. The clarity of line seen here is also important because it echoes the assured handling that is so central to the works on paper that she would paint from the latter half of the 1930s onwards. Undiluted watercolour has a very particular quality; because it consists of pigment only and of no opaque medium, laying it on thick may not make it louder but certainly amplifies the colour's severity. While the work is clearly figurative, the brush strokes also hold a concrete value of their own. Like the more freely flowing later works of a fauvist bent, this work is as much about the physical qualities of colour as it is about a still life arrangement. Still life arrangements have been present throughout Hodgkins' career with typical groupings of objects such as vessels, flowers, vegetables and fruit as well as less-typical compositions featuring things like dead game and sea shells. As a constant feature, they together formed a controlled variable that shone a light on the true nature of her painterly exploration. CHARLES NINOW
• Estimate:
  NZ$20,000 - 25,000
• Realised Price:
  *****
  

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• Category:
  Art

This Sale has been held and this item is no longer available. Details are provided for information purposes only.