FRANCES HODGKINS

 FRANCES HODGKINS

SUNDAY Feature on ART of Architecture by Gautam Shah

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Frances Hodgkins (1869-1947) was a New Zealand-based Landscape painter. She had art education in the local Dunedin School of Art. She also became an art teacher in England for a while. She frequently visited Europe but her stay in England remained most important one.

Frances Hodgkins was a skilled painter in traditional sense, but she became increasingly desirous of finding a place in Europe’s art scene. She decided in 1908, to settle in Paris. She increasingly became impressionistic and turned into a modernist. She used the simple forms, to build up the space and then exploit them further with contracting colours. She continued with water colours, but also used oil paints and charcoals. She mixed the conventions of still life painting for landscape painting. She unified her compositions by playing with texturing brushstrokes. The colours helped her to convey light and movement.

Frances Hodgkins favoured marketplaces, streets, boats and waterfronts as topics. She painted freely and spontaneously. When she found that lacking, shifted the location. Her works’ portfolio was of nearly seventy paintings, produced over nearly fifty years, in diverse media and subject matter.

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