PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland

This gouache belongs to the period when Frances Hodgkins was living in the little village of Worth Matravers in Dorset in the late 1930s, only a bus ride over the coastal hills to Weymouth, or inland to Corfe Castle, where she spent her final years. Yet there are elements here that suggest this is not one single Dorset village, but rather a composition derived of many of her favourite motifs.

The houses are tucked in and amongst each other, rather than laid out in a cohesive order, their tiny windows and simple porches to be found in many of her landscape paintings ranging from France to Spain to Britain, so that they become a kind of generic symbol of shelter and containment.

A stark bare tree alm rises up in the far left corner, while in upper right of the composition there is the highly distinctive form of an oast house, in which hops are traditionally dried. The conical-roofed design derives from Sussex, which Hodgkins drew when on holiday in Haywards Heath in the early summer of 1929 (see https://completefranceshodgkins.com/objects/26646/villagescene- peaslake).

There are fewer oast houses in Dorset, but their roofs are angular, rather than cone-shaped. Another much-loved motif is that of water flowing from a bridge or emerging from a watermill. Here it gushes forth from a black arch, cutting across the foreground, while in the very centre of the painting two trees rise up to embrace each other, like dancers in an ode to autumn. It has a muted palette, lifted by soft yellow detailing, while the overall design serves as an elegant fugue in browns and greys.

MARY KISLER