Provenance:
Private Collection

Exhibited:
Theosophical Society, Collins Street, Melbourne, Victoria November 1912 Cat no. 28

Painted in Paris, this was one of the works Frances Hodgkins chose to exhibit in Melbourne on her 1912 return to Australasia. The advent of war and her straitened economic circumstances made this her last visit. Hodgkins had written her mother a year earlier of her intention to permanently leave New Zealand as it is on the other side of the world that my work and future career lie.

Frances Hodgkins first port of call was Melbourne, before her intended tour of New Zealand. Here she exhibited seventy four watercolours in the Theosophical Society's Room in Collins Street. Opening on 21 November 1912, the show was received with much enthusiasm. Over 3,000 people visited it within three weeks and in a letter to Rachael Hodgkins dated 12 November, Frances writes that she was royally entertained by society and the centre of debate amongst artists.

The newspaper critics were ecstatic. The Argus wrote ...... she paints with a giant's strength, until she arrives at some terrific examples of the ultra-impressionism that almost take one's breath away. The Herald reported .....a breath from one of the more important of the modern French art movements. The dominant idea in her work is one of vibrating light and movement, the sense of which is preserved throughout in decorative colour schemes of brilliancy and beauty. Purchasers included the National Gallery of Victoria and the Governor of Victoria.

Mother & Child - Le Petit Choux, number 28 in the exhibition, was purchased by a Melbourne family who held it for seventy six years. Many of the paintings exhibited were sold or have subsequently entered public collections in New Zealand and Australia and are amongst Hodgkins most loved works. After the Melbourne show, Hodgkins packed the remaining works and continued on to Wellington for Christmas with her family. Before her final return to Europe in October 1913 she held solo exhibitions in Sydney, Adelaide, Dunedin and Wellington.

The portrayal of mother and child was a favourite subject of Impressionist artists such as Renoir, Mary Cassatt and Berthe Morisot. Hodgkins, who first departed New Zealand in 1901, had spent much of her time up until 1912, in France, painting, studying and teaching. Her watercolours of that latter period, particularly, express a buoyancy of feeling in their brushstrokes and enthusiasm for her subject matter. Le Petit Choux depicts the same figures as Dunedin Public Art Gallery's Woman and Child, c. 1912 and Summer, c. 1912. These people were possibly her landlady's family and Hodgkin's empathy with the intimacy of family life is palpable in the encompassing embrace, loving gaze and elevation of the beloved and seemingly indulged child. The child's serene face is bathed in light with eyes as blue as the sky. The painting's title comes from the choux pastry treat which the little one has been given to enjoy. The mother's large hands speak of hard work contrasting with the child's softness. This vitally painted work of a humble woman and her infant expresses the adoration and expectancy of the classic Madonna and child.