Frances Hodgkins painting up for $73,500

December 2, 2004

A Frances Hodgkins painting up for $73,500 at British drawings collection exhibition in Auckland

A $73,500 watercolour by New Zealand’s Frances Hodgkins features in the British drawings exhibition which opens at the Ferner Galleries in Parnell on Sunday.

The exhibition includes 47 drawings and watercolours by leading British-based artists of the early 20th century such as Sir Stanley Spencer, Augustus John and Henry Moore.

Hodgkins was born in Dunedin in 1869 and studied at Dunedin School of Art 1895-6 but spent much of her life painting in Britain.

From 1901 to 1903 she travelled and painted in Europe, exhibiting in several London galleries and the Royal Academy before returning to New Zealand.

After another sojourn in Europe 1906-12, during which she taught in Paris, and a year back in New Zealand, she returned to Europe.

She lived and taught art in St Ives during the war after which she alternated her residence between England and France, but her exhibitions attracted limited success and income.

In 1929 she was elected to and exhibited with the Seven and Five Society until her resignation in 1934.

Throughout the 1930s she exhibited in London with increasing critical success, her professional reputation secured by the invitation to represent Britain at the 1940 Venice Biennale, although the exhibition was only shown in London.

Hodgkins lived at Corfe Castle, Dorset, from 1940 until her death in 1947.

The Ferner Galleries exhibition includes art works mainly created in England between 1910 and the 1960s which was a particularly innovative and fertile period of British art.

``The artists in the exhibition collectively represent the high point of the British modern movement,’’ Ferner Galleries spokeswoman Natalie Poland said today.

``British art has long been admired by New Zealanders. Many of the artists represented in the Ferner Galleries exhibition have works held in New Zealand's Public Galleries,’’ she said.

The exhibition ends on January 31.

ENDS

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