From Frances Hodgkins to Dorothy Selby, 14th August 1932, Kings Lynn, Norfolk

“… we are leaving Tuesday morning for Bridgnorth my old love … I am tingling with impatience to get started - & at work - On reaching Bridgnorth I’ll either wire you - or send you card to reach you Wed: morning - I hope to find rooms all together in the Town nr. river - & promise not to put you up a hill by yourself as last time … Till Thursday then - at Bridgnorth.“

In August 1931, Frances Hodgkins returned to London from Martigues and St Tropez. Four months later she moved to Bodinnick-by-Fowey in Cornwall, attracted by the prospect of painting landscapes. In February 1932 she exhibited at the Leicester Galleries in London with the Seven and Five Society which was formed in 1919. The seven painter members were linked by the freshness and simplicity of their imagery and the direct way in which the paint was applied and, in addition to Hodgkins, they included Winifred Nicholson, Ben Nicholson, Christopher Wood, Ivon Hitchens and Cedric Morris. Morris was a great supporter of Hodgkins’ work, and in 1928 painted her portrait which is in the collection of the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki. Sculptor members of the Society included Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth.

Hodgkins had first shown with the Seven and Five Society in March 1929, when six of her paintings were included in its ninth exhibition. On this occasion the reviewer for The Times considered Hodgkins “most sure of her ground; her two oils, Boy in Wood (FH0853, Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū) and The Garden, were both elegant pictures … grotesque, but consistently so, as if the artist obeyed her natural vision of things.” Hodgkins also had two paintings in the Seven and Five Society’s tenth exhibition in 1931, and in the eleventh the following year she had six. She also exhibited in three other London dealer galleries in 1932; Zwemmer Gallery, Tooths and Wertheim Gallery.

By April 1932, Hodgkins was feeling more financially secure, especially so when the co-director of the Lefevre Galleries in London took her to lunch and offered her a new year-long contract with an annual income of £200 and the probability of renewal. The agreement would be renewed in July 1938, but was cancelled in November the following year because of the outbreak of war. As noted by Iain Buchanan, while a salary of £200 in 1932 was by no means lavish, it was a reasonable sum for an artist at that time, especially so as contemporary art was difficult to sell and economic conditions were uncertain.

As Hodgkins herself commented on her change of fortune with her securing the contract: “Funny how these favours come thick & fast when you are established in safety.”

Later in 1932, Dorothy Selby, who had contacted Hodgkins back in 1923 requesting lessons, visited her at Bodinnick-by-Fowey. They spent time with other friends, including Hannah Ritchie and Jane Saunders in Bridgnorth, an old market town on the Severn in Shropshire where Hodgkins had conducted successful summer painting classes in mid-1926. The combination of the season and the company provided the stimulus for a number of works from this period. As described by Joanne Drayton, they showed the influence of French artists, the “shimmering playfulness and hot piquancy that is more reminiscent of Raoul Dufy than of the British avant-garde.” These works included several inspired by the pleasure boat section of the River Severn, among them Sabrina’s Garden (FH1012, Bristol Museum and Art Gallery), Sabrina being the Roman goddess of the river, and the present Pleasure Boat, Bridgnorth (FH0994). The latter, along with Boathouse on the Severn (FH0998, Private Collection) were among the 32 works in Hodgkins’ New Watercolour Drawings exhibition at the Lefevre Galleries in October/November 1933.

The exhibition also included the 1932 watercolour Pleasure Garden (FH0995, Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū), which was the subject of much controversy in 1948 when it was one of six paintings by Hodgkins sent from London on approval to the Canterbury Society of Arts in Christchurch. When the Society decided against making a purchase, a group of citizens subscribed funds and bought Pleasure Garden for the collection of the city’s Robert McDougall Art Gallery. Debate raged when the City Council declined to accept the offer, and finally, in 1951, when the art gallery’s advisory board was more sympathetic towards modern art, it voted to accept the painting.

The eponymous vessel in Pleasure Boat, Bridgnorth dominates the centre of this composition, with a view of the River Severn and a cluster of tall and closely packed houses and hills beyond. Pleasure Boat, Bridgnorth is painted from a vantage point further along the river, so that rather than the ruined tower of the castle in the High Town, the copper cupola atop the tower of St Mary’s Church leads the eye upwards. Whereas in her 1926 watercolour, cloud billows evenly over the scene, here squiggly clouds drift off above a simplified bridge (a contemporary photograph shows that it had two arches) that leads across to the opposite riverbank.

A distinguishing feature of this watercolour is the artist’s change of perspective; whereas the barge itself is depicted obliquely, from the front, a canoe on the river is seen from directly above, as in a bird’s-eye view. Hodgkins places her major focus on the pleasure boat landing stage further along the river.

The same historical photograph shows how accurately she interpreted it. One of its vessels hoves into sight in the foreground, its ruffled canopy possibly reminded Hodgkins of the popular song, “Surrey with a fringe on top.”

Hers is a witty approach, emphasising the anthropomorphic ‘face’ of the landing stage. The skiff in the foreground mirrors those that populate Poynter’s 19th century watercolour, while the pleasure boat also hovers in her earlier watercolour of Bridgnorth, its structure reflected on the water’s surface. In Pleasure Boat, Bridgnorth, by comparison, Hodgkins captures the liquescence of the water itself, a focus that continued to capture her interest throughout her later career. Importantly, there are no figures here to populate the scene – hers is a pure landscape painting, a study in cloudscapes, riverbank and the Severn itself, the stage’s humorous face addressing the figure beyond the picture plane – that of the viewer, rather than the viewed.

Beyond the vessels in Pleasure Boat, Bridgnorth can be seen the treelined river bank, the narrow and steeply-roofed houses of Bridgnorth captured here in an economic and impressionistic manner, but also showing enough detail to capture the essence of the town.

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Written by Mary Kisler