Frances Hodgkins holds an important place within the Dunedin Public Art Gallery collection. Through purchases, gifts and bequests, the gallery’s collection of paintings and drawings amply represents Hodgkins’ practice over time, with works dated from 1896 through to 1945.
Drawing primarily from the gallery’s collection, a group of Hodgkins’ late-career works are on display in the exhibition "Frances Hodgkins: Between Croft and Corfe". From the time Hodgkins departed New Zealand for London in 1901, she regularly travelled across Europe, North Africa and the United Kingdom. In the 1930s, Hodgkins spent much of her time moving between London and counties on the southwest peninsula of England, including Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Somerset and Sussex.
Many of these villages were captured in Hodgkins’ work, whether she was painting from memory or painting the landscapes, objects and people in her immediate surroundings — an example of which is Corfe Castle (1943).
Hodgkins first spent time in Corfe Castle village in the mid 1930s, where she processed and produced work that reflected upon her recent time in Spain. While Hodgkins never stayed in one place for long, at the outbreak of World War2 in 1939, she settled in Corfe Castle and was based there until 1945, working in a studio that was once a nonconformist chapel.
When speaking of Corfe Castle, Hodgkins wrote: "I was feeling very much under the weather both physically & otherwise but have picked up wonderfully since coming here and am now doing quite good work under the spell of the place & general atmosphere of calm & simplicity: boredom, of course for anyone but a fool artist waiting believingly for inspiration ... I do better in every way by remaining out of London — I hope I am now in for a steady flow of work ..." (Linda Gill [ed.], Letters of Frances Hodgkins, Auckland University Press: 1993, p.463).
In Corfe Castle, Hodgkins populated the landscape with three key motifs — church, castle and elements of rural life.
This painting speaks to the ways in which she would approach her source material at this time, playing with scale, perspective and geography.
Built in the 11th century, the Corfe Castle ruin is perched on a hill overlooking the village of the same name and appears in many of Hodgkins’ works.
Corfe Castle can be viewed in "Frances Hodgkins: Between Croft and Corfe" until July 23 at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery.
