PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland Ferner Gallery Jonathan Grant Galleries [as Baby with Beads]

While closely following the development of her sister Isabel's burgeoning family Frances Hodgkins recognised that having a family herself would curtail her determination to work as a professional artist. Instead, family groups, babies and children became recurring subjects in her work, both in the early years in New Zealand and then in Europe. She also painted for children, showing two watercolours in John Baillie's Second Annual Children's Exhibition in Bond Street, London, in January 1909, and, more famously, had two miniature works in Sydney Burney's model gallery for children in 1934.

Her most prolific period, however, was during the war in St Ives, Cornwall, when artists were forbidden to paint out of doors for security reasons. She now relied on portraiture financially, finding her subjects among the older residents of St Ives; the Belgian refugees who arrived in 1916; and young mothers eager to capture their children's infancy. Such subjects were not always easy, Hodgkins writing to her mother in July 2016 when staying briefly at Chipping Campden in Gloucestershire; 'I am painting babies ... but they (the babies) all seem to come out like Winston Churchill"...(1)'

Most of Hodgkins' studies were in watercolours, a medium in which she was adept and ideal for capturing fidgety infants. In 1918 twenty-two of these were included in the 24th International Society exhibition at the Grosvenor Gallery, causing Hodgkins to write gleefully to her brother-in-law Will Field; 'Yesterday I sold a 12 gn [guinea] baby. Item: Paint more babies! In fact keep the cradle full to quote an old friend of yours'...(2)' She elaborated in a letter to her mother; 'They are small pictures mostly at easy prices - all babies & mothers & children ... Dear women all of them with husbands fighting & one a prisoner who had never seen his beautiful baby'.(3)'

Hodgkins' technique and subject matter suggest the influence of Parisian artists Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt, whose work she was familiar with from living in Paris between 1908 - 1914, but also influenced by the post-Impressionist use of black set against strong colour. In Paris she had briefly taken lessons in oil painting, but found the viscous material difficult to work with, not least when she was so skilled in the use of watercolour. However, once settled in St Ives, Hodgkins set herself the challenge of coming to terms with oil painting.

Unlike the watercolours, Baby with Beads was probably a private commission for a family with means, as oils were expensive and slow, waiting for each layer of colour to dry - but with the advantage that she could adapt her composition, unlike watercolour. Hodgkins would have begun with a preliminary sketch at close quarters, cleverly using the abacus to keep the baby's attention until she had captured the detail she needed. In the finished work, she has eradicated details that might define a cot, a couch, or some other support against which the infant is propped. The brushwork and focus on pattern are like that used in The Edwardians (Auckland Art Gallery). Outlines are deliberately smudged in certain areas, whereas delicate lines draw attention to the baby's hand and the abacus in the foreground. The delicate pinks of the rosy quilt and the soft blues and smudgy whites, laid on in thick impasto, create a halo effect behind the baby's head, and Hodgkins has reduced the use of black to a spherical shape in the lower left-hand side. One senses the pleasure gained from the composition, the artist enjoying the tactile nature of oil paint, but also the concentrated gaze and determined reach of the baby as it struggles to grasp the brightly coloured beads.

MARY KISLER

(1): https://completefranceshodgkins.com/ objects/29445/letter-from-frances-hodgkins-to- rachel-hodgkins

(2): https://completefranceshodgkins.com/ objects/29479/letter-from-frances-hodgkins-to-will- field#field_description

(3): https://completefranceshodgkins.com/ objects/29487/letter-from-frances-hodgkins-to- rachel-hodgkins#field_description