To Rachel Hodgkins, 19th April 1901; From F.H., 20 London Road, Upper Norwood, London.

… Then change at London Bridge, bus to Victoria and down to Norwood. Effie and Mr Spence were waiting for me. Effie and I went to town for the first time on Monday … We took a bus and rode up some of the principal streets. I caught sight of the New English Art Club in Piccadilly, so in we went.

Frances Mary Hodgkins was born on 28 April 1869 in Dunedin, the third child and second daughter of William Mathew Hodgkins, barrister and solicitor and amateur painter, and Rachel Owen. While her older sister Isabel obviously inherited their father’s artistic talent, Frances developed more slowly, and the earliest of her sketches date from about 1886 when the family was living at Ravensbourne, near Dunedin. In November the following year she exhibited for the first time with the Otago Art Society, and subsequently with the Canterbury Society of Arts and the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts, Wellington. Her fifth showing with the Otago Art Society, in November 1894, included the watercolour Old Boathouse, Port Chalmers and four other works, Water at Leith, Study of a Head, Washing Day, and Study in Charcoal – Girl Reading.

Old Boathouse, Port Chalmers' presents a view across a corner of Otago harbour, with the right-hand side of the composition dominated by the structure identified in the title. In front of it appears to be a rail from which fishing nets are hung, presumably for drying and maintenance, and several dinghies are stacked vertically nearby. Beyond, and to the left, other small sailing craft have been hauled up on the shore, and above them on the horizon is the spire of the Iona Presbyterian Church in Mount Street, Port Chalmers, built in 1883.

Eighteen ninety-four has been described by Roger Collins as one of the ‘glorious years of the Otago Art Society’. In addition to Frances Hodgkins and her father, the 126 working members of the Society included such notables as James Nairn, Alfred H. O’Keefe, James Crowe Richmond (father of Dorothy Kate Richmond, a friend of Frances Hodgkins), Petrus Van der Velden, and Alfred W. Walsh. Frances Hodgkins’s inclusions in the 1894 exhibition were favourably reviewed by the two local newspapers, the Otago Daily Times noting that one of her two figure subjects was ‘painted with great skill’ and that her work generally showed ‘strong signs of earnest and attentive study’.The Evening Star was also positive, observing ‘Miss Hodgkins is evidently making satisfactory progress with her study’, and singled out her Old Boathouse, Port Chalmers as being ‘carefully rendered in a sound style’.

Old Boathouse, Port Chalmers' was probably painted in 1893, the same year that Hodgkins commenced lessons with Girolamo Nerli, and her focus on an aged and characterful building reflected other titles by Hodgkins - all watercolours - from that same period: The Old Barn, The Old Brewery, and The Old Mill, while buildings were also included in Back-garden Scene, Sheds by the River and The Leith. The Port Chalmers boatshed appears to have had a colourful history, with one source suggesting it began life as the cabin on the ship Industry, which was wrecked, and then salvaged to become the storehouse of the well-known whaler and shipping operator Johnny Jones (1809-69). In 1899 the Otago Witness reproduced a photograph of the structure, showing ‘the practical applications to which a wreck may be turned’ , and known as the Green Cabin where the local fisherman ‘French Louis’ lived. It was a well-known landmark and featured on postcards of Port Chalmers and eventually was lost to the development of Port Chalmers port where the container terminal now stands.

It was not uncommon for Hodgkins to produce two versions of her paintings, and she did so with Old Boathouse, Port Chalmers. One version, now held in the Auckland Art Gallery, is lighter in colour, while the present work appears the more assured and finished, and so was presumably the second to be executed.

Three months after showing at the 1894 Otago Art Society exhibition, Hodgkins began attending the Dunedin School of Art preparing for the South Kensington examinations for which she received first-class passes in both the elementary and advanced stages. In August 1896 she opened a studio in View Street, Dunedin, and advertised for pupils. She continued to show with the Otago Art Society (exhibiting 8 works in 1896, 5 in 1897, 7 in 1898, 6 in 1899 and 7 in 1900), as well as with the Auckland Society of Arts, the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts and the Canterbury Society of Arts. On 6 February 1901 she left Dunedin on the Moana for Sydney, via Lyttelton and Wellington, and from there sailed for London, where she arrived on 7th April.

It is likely that Hodgkins produced Old Boathouse, Port Chalmers whilst travelling around the Otago region with her painting companion Effie Spence. The Spence family, from Dunedin, later retired to Upper Norwood, southeast London, and accommodated Hodgkins when she first arrived in that city in 1901. She began painting in London soon afterwards, again accompanied by her friend Effie. Eric McCormick describes how the Spences had established ‘a small corner of Dunedin’ in London, adorning their house – which they named ‘Totara’ – with Otago art, including at least one painting they commissioned by Frances Hodgkins.

Written by Jonathan Gooderham & Richard Wolfe.

To Rachel Hodgkins, 18 September 1899. Moeraki.

The Maoris have come from all parts and I have renewed acquaintance with a lot of old models, they are …. hugely interesting from an artistic point of view…. The weather still holds good, yesterday it blew a good deal but it is gloriously fine today and we are going to take our lunch over to the Kaik [Maori settlement near Moeraki] and sketch Maoris.

Images of Maori, painted in the period 1896-1900, occupy a prominent position in Hodgkins’s oeuvre. The original New Zealander had long held a fascination for European artists, the best known and most prolific of whom was probably Bohemian Gottfried Lindauer (1839-1926). In 1893 Hodgkins began lessons with visiting Italian artist Girolamo Pieri Nerli, and it is highly likely she knew of his recent paintings of Pacific subjects, in Samoa and Fiji, while he also produced some based on the Australian Aboriginal.

Hodgkins’ paintings of Maori are almost entirely restricted to portrait studies of women and children. She discovered that there was a market for such subjects, while they were also well received by critics. During the closing years of the nineteenth century she travelled with painting companions to various locations, including Moeraki on the east coast of North Otago, where she was able to engage and work with Maori models. The above letter to her mother described such a visit to Moeraki which coincided with the tangi for a chief.

Three years later, and now in France, Hodgkins recalled the appeal of painting Maori subjects:

I must say the idea of town life when I return does not attract me – I am more than ever set on painting Maoris & the thought that I am going back to a whole island full of them gives me infinite comfort – they are still to me so much more beautiful than anything I have seen on this side of the world…..

Maori Girl in Blue is typical of Hodgkins’ approach, depicting head and shoulders only, which ‘float’ against the paper. It was executed quickly, using the wet-on-wet technique by which new layers of watercolour pigment were applied over those which have not yet dried, a method ideal for outdoor and on-the-spot painting and which was popular with the Impressionists. Similar to the earlier Maori Girl, 1896 (collection of the Dunedin Public Art Gallery) the subject of Maori Girl in Blue evokes a childlike innocence, smiling, and with large eyes and pronounced lips. This sentimental appeal has been likened to that which was popular in late Victorian paintings of children, as by John Everett Millais and Edwin Landseer.

While Hodgkins was aware of the social circumstances of her Maori subjects, her interest was purely artistic. Thus, by detaching her sitters - attractive young Maori women in European dress - from any background or social context she was able to focus instead on informality and liveliness. And because they were free of ethnic references, Hodgkins’ works stand apart from those of three other artists who were painting Maori at this time: Charles Frederick Goldie, Gottfried Lindauer and Louis John Steele.

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Written by Richard Wolfe
Research by Jonathan Gooderham