PROVENANCE
2004 Christie's, London 20th Century British Art, Lot 99, Illustrated on p. 121

EXHIBITED:
1933, October - November Lefevre Gallery, London, New Watercolour Drawings, no 38.

After her arrival in Bodinnick, Cornwall in December 1931, Frances Hodgkins complained to her friend Dorothy Selby: 'It is too cold to work out of doors - Besides which the colour is so dark & sodden with damp - Bracken is bright red - black ships on the river' (1).

Instead, Hodgkins produced a series of nocturnes, accommodating the gloom that descended in the late afternoon. Nocturnes still need light sources, and Hodgkins' view from her bedroom window at the Nook in the tiny village of Bodinnick placed her almost at water of the river Fowey in Cornwall. The more elevated window in the lounge of the Old Ferry Inn (a location that also provided warmth and a glass of wine) provided a more panoramic vista , allowing her to capture the reflection of light from the larger village of Fowey across the river, or the rare nights when moonlight danced across the water.

From these vantage points Hodgkins produced a remarkable series of drawings, watercolours and oil paintings that helped promote her burgeoning reputation as a leading English modernist. Whereas she initially produced a preparatory drawing for Tate London's version of *Wings over Water that focused on pattern rather than form (held at Te Papa), (later paring back extraneous details in the finished painting), she then moved on to a series of exhibition drawings that demonstrate remarkable strength and clarity of vision. (2) Cornish Window, 1932, is one of those.

The paper is left untouched to create the paler tones of the flowers in the jug and the reflection of moonlight on water. Elsewhere there are varying tones of black - paler in the foreground and sinking into inky darkness in the background, shaded, horizontal strokes and patches of stippling possibly created by using a graphite stick on its side. The anemones that sit in a cut glass vase in both the Te Papa drawing and finished painting at Tate, now rise above the jug in the background, as if they are growing out of the hill behind rather than sitting in a vase. The sprig of leaves and berries (also found in the oil paintings) float in mid-air above a pot of gloxinias, balancing the composition.

MARY KISLER

(1) https://completefranceshodgkins.com/ objects/29929/letter-from-frances-hodgkins-to- dorothy-selby

(1) Sea Landscape with Flowers [Bodinnick], Fletcher Trust Collection, and Still Life in Landscape, Bodinnick, Cornwall (Te Papa) are two other examples.