Hodgkins, Frances, 1869-1947

Frances Hodgkins was born in Dunedin, the daughter of a watercolour artist. From 1895 to 1896 she studied at the Dunedin School of Art. After teaching in New Zealand, she made, in 1907, the first of several painting trips to Europe. She held her first London exhibition at Paterson's Gallery in that year. She lived in Paris between 1908 and 1914 and was the first woman instructor at the Académie Colarossi. She returned to England for the duration of the First World War, and lived in Manchester in the 1920s before moving to St. Ives, where she met Cedric Morris who was to become another lifelong friend. He recommended her for membership of the Seven and Five Society in 1929.

In 1933 she refused Paul Nash's invitation to join Unit One and she resigned from the Seven and Five when Ben Nicholson passed the rule that all exhibitions were to be non-representational. Retrospective exhibitions were held at the Lefevre Gallery in 1946 and by the Arts Council in 1952. Frances Hodgkins died in 1947.

From the guide to the Drawings, gouaches and watercolours by Frances Hodgkins, 1933-1946, (Tate Gallery Archive)