LESSON DEMONSTRATION, BURFORD
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To Dorothy Selby, 26 April 1923. Studio, St.Lawrence’s Street, Burford, Oxon.
‘I shall be most pleased to give you some coaching in the summer, or as soon after May 14th as you like. My Season starts then. My terms are 4 guineas a month a course of 12 demonstration lessons, or I can give you the course in a shorter time if desirable . . .’
Frances Hodgkins’ principal teaching method in her art classes were 'lesson demonstrations'. Today, these demonstrations serve as unique records of her teaching technique and style, and illustrate both the confident fluidity of her brushwork and her keen eye for the nuances of light and colour.
Executed rapidly, pencil marks in Lesson Demonstration, Burford are still visible beneath the washes of colour. Hodgkins evidently sketched the significant landmarks in front of her with pencil and then applied swathes of loose, thin paint, which were allowed to bleed and merge in many areas. In transcribing the vista, all attention is given over to capturing the bare essential forms of the landscape and the chromatic variances of the scene so that the work consequently assumes an abstract quality.
Lesson Demonstration, Burford c.1923
Private Collection
The same view present day
REFERENCE | Linda Gill (ed.), Letters of Frances Hodgkins, Auckland University Press, 1993