Inscribed lower left: Published by Contemporary Lithographs Ltd, London

Reference: Arrangement of Jugs (1938) is a lively and buoyant still life by renowned painter Frances Hodgkins. The edition of lithographs is Hodgkins' only surviving print and was commissioned in 1936 by the London-based publisher Contemporary Lithographs Ltd as part of a venture to supply a wider audience with quality and affordable original works of art. Arrangement of Jugs is from the suite of fifteen prints by different artists launched in 1938, one of which was purchased by the British Museum.

Although she had not worked with lithography before Hodgkins was praised at the time for her fresh and innovative use of the medium and she herself 'found it interesting and remunerative as a sideline to other works'. (Kapiti Treasures, Janet Bayley (Edt.l, Mahara Gallery, 2010, p. 36)

Moving increasingly away from traditional modes of representation in her works, some objects in Arrangement of Jugs are pared back to their most essential formal elements or depicted through abstract bodies of colour. Essentially disregarding any hierarchy within the objects Hodgkins has employed several perspectives within a single composition giving the effect that some objects appear to float freely in space. The ethereal quality of the abstract forms combined with the objects depicted more literally adds dynamism and vivacity to the work.

The simplified outlines of objects and bold areas of colour in Arrangement of Jugs are typical of Hodgkins' approach to colour and form in the mid to late 1930s and relate strongly to two known watercolours of almost identical titles, Still Life (c.1937) and Arrangement of Jugs (c.1937) suggesting that they may have been working drawings for the lithographs.

Illustrated:

Frances Hodgkins: Kapiti Treasures, Janet Bayley (Edt.), Mahara Gallery, 2010. p. 33

Frances Hodgkins: Paintings and Drawings, lain Buchanan, Elizabeth Eastmond and Michael Dunn, Auckland University Press, 1994. p.151

Portrait of Frances Hodgkins, E.H McCormick, Auckland University Press and Oxford University Press, 1981. p.123