To John Piper, 8th September 1941; Studio, East Street, Corfe Castle, Dorset

… the nicest letter I’m ever likely to have on this earth telling me of all the nice things you and Mr Brown have fixed up for me with the ultimate glory & honour of the inner gallery thrown in - it’s too much greatness … Talking of titles, I feel mine to be banale & inadequate – if Myfanwy and you have some silver words up your sleeve, give them to me

This is a typical Frances Hodgkins ‘farmyard’ composition, whose identifiable elements include a pair of wheels on an axle, a plough, a barrel and what are presumably other bits of discarded agricultural machinery. The scene appears to depict mechanical equipment that has been put aside and left to stand idle during the war and commune with nature. In between the various elements, flowers sprout up and in the background a bank of tall trees representing the woods mentioned in the title.

The Corner of the Woods is reminiscent of a slightly later painting, The China Shoe, a gouache of 1942, in which still-life objects take on a ‘ghostly quality’ and the composition is animated by an array of calligraphic flourishes. The subtle dark colouring and somewhat mysterious mood connect it closely with British Neo-Romanticism, and in particular with the works of artists John Piper, John Craxton and John Minton. The China Shoe exhibits graphic effects similar to those employed by Piper, who was a close friend and an admirer of Hodgkins’s paintings, and dates from an excursion to Wales in 1942, when she stayed at the Dulaucothy Arms in the village of Pumpsaint, Carmarthenshire. From there she wrote to her close friend, supporter and Knightsbridge gallery owner Eardley Knollys that she had been making pictures of chimney ornaments, which she found lent themselves to decoration: ‘I love them – tender silly unarranged things.

Wheels, which make a dominant appearance in The Corner of the Woods, were a recurring motif in Hodgkins’s work, and was also common in the neo-romantic and surrealist imagery of the time, as in the work of Paul Nash. It had various interpretations, such as suggestions of the self, or modernity, while it could also have an anthropomorphic aspect, with wheel hubs being read as eyes. Such forms are apparent in Hodgkins’s 1942 gouache Broken Tractor, of which Elizabeth Eastmond describes that vehicle’s wheel hubs as looking like ‘grotesque, anguished eyes.’Broken Tractor was included in the exhibition ‘Gouaches by Frances Hodgkins’ at the Lefevre Galleries in March-April 1943, along with another following the wheel theme, Mill Wheel, while there were also several Welsh subjects, including Dulaucothy, Barn Interior, and Dulaucothy Arms, Green Valley, Carmarthenshire, and Welsh Emblem and Welsh Farm.

Hodgkins’s 1943 exhibition, Gouaches by Frances Hodgkins – A new series of Gouaches painted during 1942 – 3, was held at the Lefevre Galleries, which had recently reopened after closing in July 1940 due to the falling demand for art during wartime and the difficulty of obtaining paintings. With this exhibition Hodgkins was able to realise her long desired aim of presenting a thematically unified display of recent work, in this case produced in the period 1942-3. Her 1943 exhibition was also significant because her paintings were shown alongside another exhibition, Picasso and his Contemporaries, which was a departure at Lefevre, and in so doing it demonstrated her affinities with French painting. In addition, the nature of the works in her exhibition reflected the shift on the part of the gallery towards the work of the new and emerging British neo-romantic group, the best known of whom was Graham Sutherland.

The 1943 exhibition Gouaches by Frances Hodgkins was a sell-out, and so successful that five further gouaches were added to the original fifteen in the show. Three of these suggested the artist’s interest in wheels and discarded farmyard machinery – Wheelwright’s, Corfe and Wheelwright’s, Solva and Wreckageem>, Kimmeridge, while a fourth work, Verge of the Woods, may have been similar to or in fact the present The Corner of the Woods by another title. In any event, little appears to be known about The Corner of the Woods; it remained in a private collection in the United Kingdom until 1979 when it was sold in London at Sotheby’s auction, Modern British Drawings, Painting & Sculpture.

Written by Jonathan Gooderham & Richard Wolfe.

To Dorothy Selby, c.16 September 1942. Dolaucothy Arms Hotel, Pumpsaint, Llanwrda, Carmarthenshire, Wales.

I am here & really resting brain and body …. We are over 400 ft. up & the air is like wine flavoured with conifer pine – rather too many conifers….. To me it is paradise after Corfe. Fine country which will be better still in week or so – harvest in full swing.

Following the declaration of war on 3 September 1939 the now 70-year-old Frances Hodgkins continued to live in the Dorset village of Corfe Castle, but proximity to the English Channel meant local towns were now targets for enemy bombing. At the same time, tanks and military convoys trained nearby and often passed through the village, convincing her to seek the solitude of Geoffrey Gorer’s cottage in Somerset. She also spent time in Dolaucothy in Wales, and on 31 October 1942 wrote to Eardley Knollys, owner of a gallery in Knightsbridge, London, enthusing over her recent work:

I have done masses of work in between showers of torrential rain, in and about the woods & river of Dolaucothy and have even seriously made pictures of the funny chimney ornaments, which do so lend themselves to decoration – I love them –

At Dolaucothy Hodgkins felt inspired and enjoyed a burst of productive energy. By December she was back at Corfe Castle, and a selection of 15 paintings resulting from her Welsh trip were shown at Lefevre Galleries in March-April the following year. Alongside her exhibition, Gouaches by Frances Hodgkins – A New Series of Gouaches Painted during 1942-3, the gallery mounted a small collection of modern French painting, Picasso and his Contemporaries. The gallery had not previously shown the School of Paris with an English artist, and Hodgkins was the first to be so honoured. She hoped to be in London for the private view – ‘I look forward to seeing my wall of 15 - & more especially Picasso & his merry men’ – but unfortunately was too ill with bronchitis to attend. However, there was much positive response to the exhibition, as from artist John Piper and critic Eric Newton, and the artist herself was able to report that it ‘had gone wonderfully’.

Whereas many of Hodgkins’ previous solo exhibitions included earlier as well as recent work, the fifteen paintings in her 1943 show were both recent and in the same medium. The selection therefore had a sense of cohesion, characterised by fluid brushwork, abstracted forms and light-coloured passages over larger and darker areas. Welsh Emblem may have qualified as one of the more enigmatic works in this collection, with the composition swirling around a patterned tablecloth and a bowl containing potatoes, beetroot and other garden produce, and autumn leeks which allude to the title. Other elements may be less easy to identify, but Hodgkins’ confidence and dynamic approach are plainly obvious.

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Written by Richard Wolfe
Research by Jonathan Gooderham

To Duncan Macdonald, 22 May 1943. Studio, Corfe Castle, Dorset.

‘I need a little more time to finish the Gouaches I have for you – April-May months in spite of the idyllic weather conditions have been distracting & dithering beyond works . . .

Towards the end of 1942, Frances Hodgkins retreated to her studio at Corfe Castle near Wareham in Dorset to complete a series of works that were due for exhibition with the Lefevre Gallery, London. It is during this time that Hodgkins was selected to be included in the Penguin Modern Painters series written by Myfanwy Evans and edited by Sir Kenneth Clark. Hodgkins was delighted by this prospect and wrote; 'As far as pictures can be described no one could do it better'. The book was delayed by the war, but was eventually published in 1948.

On the 18th of January 1943 Frances Hodgkins sent a ‘roll’ of her most recent gouache paintings to A. J. McNeill Reid of Lefevre Gallery, London. Reid had arranged for Hodgkins’ works to be exhibited the previous November, but Hodgkins was unable to make the deadline even though she planned to create works 'mainly in gouache, 2 sizes – uniform sizes as much as possible'. The delay in the production of her works could be attributed to the fact that her studio roof collapsed in June 1942 and was not repaired until later that year. She did, however, eventually complete nine gouaches, which she sent to Reid on the 18th of January. A further six gouaches were sent on the 21st February and she instructed Reid to put together a 'small, compact show of 15 gouaches that she hoped would be contemporary & recent & fresh'.

One of the works painted during her time at the studio at Corfe Castle was The Water Mill in 1943. This work depicts Hodgkins’ ability to produce a certain sense of ambiguity in her work where objects in the fore, middle and background appear to co-exist on a single plane. The dominant form of the mill is given a position of authority in the composition, but it does not dominate the entire arrangement. Instead it is harmoniously integrated into the lush vegetation of the surrounding landscape. The fluidity of Hodgkins’ brushwork, which is characteristic of her later work, is evident in this piece, thanks in large part to the choice of medium: gouache. The use of vivid yellow highlights, electric blues and vibrant greens contrast with the sombre planes of soft greys and blues and allow for both a sense of dynamism and for one of controlled calm.

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Written by Grace Alty & Jonatrhan Gooderham
Edited by Jemma Field

To William Hodgkins, 21 June 1944. Corfe Castle, Dorset.

Friends here are good to me & the country is lovely & this bit of coast line in Dorset the loveliest in the world … I am in fairly good health – and am feeling the benefit of regular meals - and rest. Most of us are looking rather wan – one needs to be pretty strong headed to survive a 4yrs. war such as this war …..Have plenty of work to do for the Galleries – I am deluged with invitations commissions etc – They all want Frances H now.

In 1933, after returning to London from her time on the Continent, Hodgkins moved to Corfe Castle in Dorset. She was attracted there by ex-pupil, friend and potter Amy Krauss, and would retain this connection with Dorset for the rest of her life. Corfe Castle is situated on a peninsula known as the Isle of Purbeck, which would feature in the title of a number of paintings executed by Hodgkins in the mid-1940s.

Although Hodgkins had moved to the relative isolation of Corfe Castle, she could not avoid the effects of the war. Her 1940/41 oil painting Houses and Outhouses, Purbeck included ‘tank traps’, and other symbolic references such as farm implements in states of disuse or dereliction. This highly abstracted composition also incorporated various ambiguous shapes, and was considered a major contribution to the British neo-romanticism of the day.

Some three years later, in 1944, she took as her subject the courtyard next to her cottage in the village of Corfe Castle and produced a trio of paintings, two of which are in New Zealand collections: The Courtyard in Wartime (The University of Auckland Art Collection) and Purbeck Courtyard, Early Afternoon (Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa). The former is the most dramatic of these works; quite aside from the manipulation of the formal elements, an unsettlingly theatrical atmosphere suggests the night raids by enemy aircraft.

In late June 1944 Hodgkins wrote to her friend Dorothy Selby about the ‘devilry’ or war and its impact on her at Corfe Castle:

The village is stiff with troops mostly Canadians & the motor traffic is terrific…. The planes overhead bringing back wounded from Normandy have scared all art out of me – I simply cannot paint. This lovely weather makes it easier. The sun has been pouring down on us & we are literally cooked.

Country Colour, Purbeck was painted at about the same time as the courtyard works, and may be interpreted as an entirely different response to the war. A more conventional composition executed with a naïve charm, it presents a lone cow standing before a straw-covered clump of mangelwurzels (cultivated root vegetables), while the background is dominated by a large white double-gabled structure surrounded by the artist’s now familiar calligraphic trees. In contrast to the frightening intensity of The Courtyard in Wartime, Country Colour, Purbeck is positively bucolic, an essay in simplicity and productivity beneath a blue Dorset sky. In terms of style and subject matter it is similar to the earlier (1938-1940) Cheviot Farm (Manchester Art Gallery), in which a left- facing cow stands amongst farmyard buildings and machinery. Hodgkins’ interest in agricultural themes was also apparent in the 1943 gouache The Root Crop (Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki), which has been described as a ‘twilight fantasy’, and bears more relation to the intensity of the courtyard series than the apparent innocence and pastoralism of Country Colour, Purbeck.

Hodgkins exhibited the present work, and others, at The Lefevre Gallery in April 1945 and received a positive review in The Spectator. Although Country Colour, Purbeck was not singled out, artist Michael Ayrton wrote that these paintings demonstrated that the artist had ‘reached a very complete and final maturity’.

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Written by Richard Wolfe
Research by Jonathan Gooderham

To A. J. McNeill Reid, 20th December 1934; from F.H., Highlands, Corfe Castle, Dorset.

‘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 . . .’

Frances Hodgkins first moved from London to Corfe Castle in 1934. Corfe Castle is situated on the Isle of Purbeck, in Dorset, and is a historic site known primarily for the ancient castle ruins that sit on top of a hill immediately behind the village. Hodgkins relocated to Corfe Castle in an attempt to take ‘refuge’ in the countryside and to reconnect with her friend from St Ives, the potter Amy Krauss. Hodgkins would return to the village regularly and in 1936 she set up a small studio, in a converted Wesleyan chapel in West Street.

Hodgkins eventually made Corfe Castle her permanent home in 1940 when she could no longer travel back and forth to Europe. She believed that Corfe was the place for quiet ones. Living in Corfe Castle gave her the opportunity to work 'moderately hard, moderately successful in a landscape of steep valleys speedy rivers & castles looking like their own mountains.'

A selection of Hodgkins’s works was included in the British Council exhibition in Paris in 1945, Quelques Contemporains Anglais, to celebrate the liberation of France. Corfe Castle was not always idyllically peaceful. With the outbreak of the Second World War (1939-1945), England’s coastline was severely battered by enemy fire and nightly German air raids. Hodgkins was greatly affected by the stress of war conditions and the continual heavy military traffic through Corfe Castle to the coastal defences and army camps around the Isle of Purbeck and the highly secret radar establishment at Worth Matravers, eventually caused the roof of her studio to collapse. She wrote; the planes overhead bringing back wounded from Normandy have scared all art out me.

A key part of her work during this period was the continued influence of French art and the increase of a neoromantic tendency in her work. The present painting,Corfe Castle Village was inspired by the local landscape around her cottage and studio. Painted in gouache in predominantly greens and blues, with dashes of bright yellow, Hodgkins makes a play on that recurring theme in her late works: the still-life combined with a landscape view. Here however, she blends architectural features into the local landscape so that roofs of houses are seen just peeking out from the scrubby hillside terrain.

The central undulating hill accompanied by a wealth of vegetation that is mapped out in a variety of strokes, produces a painting that is quietly contemplative yet deeply arresting. Corfe Castle village is situated between two gaps in the ridges of the Purbeck hills. The present scene is painted from the Eastern ridge of the Purbeck Hills looking over houses in the Wareham road entrance to the village and across to the rounded edge of the scrub covered Western ridge. The scene of this painting remains virtually unchanged to this day.

Written by Jonathan Gooderham & Richard Wolfe.