Not an easy show to find -- some sign-posting wd be good -- I had imagined a big show -- but a real neat one-room show when I did find it-- very enjoyable -- lovely to see such fine work by Hodgkins ----- & the adjacent room appropriately hung with English & French predecessors & contemporaries.
Highly recommended show!
Very fresh looking conserved in portfolio for years in France [?] -- some of the earlier continental tourist exoticism -- markets boats on seashore --- muted greys & dark blues & firm drawing -- & that shd have accounted for the colouring of "Woman sewing with children" --- not curator-suggestion on wall-card that maybe she cdnt afford cadmiums --- & it is noticeably muted hung between 2 of the brightest of the paintings -- I'd say the more obvious conclusion is it's c. 1902/3 --
fascinating! attempt at a Cézanne apple still-life -- her earlist oil-painitng? 'background' in a dull grey & all surfaces like plasticine missing luminosity of Cézanne's still-lifes. -- presumably after Salon d'Automne show of 1907 -- say 1908. Quite a nice point for Hodgins' understanding of 'modern'.
A touchstone for Hodgkins' incipient modernism is the so-called "The Piano Lesson" - like Matisse's "Red Studio" - vase, doorway, mirror with reflection of woman leaning all over a little table -- sub-frames on a fundamentally flat surface -- arabesques of brush drawing - puddles of intense colour detached from drawing -- Hodgkins 'Fauve'..... It's not likely to be a piano lesson scene -- lessons are usually far more private -- teacher in such subjects --- Dutch or Fragonard -- is usually more clearly dominant & here lesson would disturb the summer drawing-room/terrace gathering -- more appropriate to construe it as a piano-duet being played by two women one older & one younger.
Re- Wall-cards.
Note A: "Le Bearceuse" shd be "La Berceuse".
Note B: There needs to be greater clarity over the term "Impressionism" in Hodgkins & English contemporaries --- 30 years after the first Impressionst exhibition the term needs a much more nuanced account for the many imitators ---
Note C : & Robert Bevan's painting is an unlikely candidate for referring to Divisionism -- a Camille - or maybe Lucien - Pissaro look much more likely in the painting on show [evn the rural Pissaro's Pontoise/Auvers subjects].
Comments