He has assembled a series of 11 works by the Dunedin-born artist for an exhibition which opens tomorrow.
There have been numerous exhibitions of Hodgkins' works at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery and individual works for sale at Dunedin dealer galleries occasionally over the years, but the last major selling exhibition was in January 1949, two years after her death, according to art historian and author Dr Roger Collins.
Six works previously seen in Christchurch were exhibited and for sale at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery, then at Logan Park. Before that, her last major exhibition, "A Notable Exhibition of Water Colours", was held at the Art Gallery Hall (now the Settlers Museum) in July 1913 when she was back in New Zealand. It contained 44 works, of which 43 were for sale, he said.
However, every six or eight years there is a selling exhibition of Hodgkins' works in Auckland, according to McDowell. He feels Dunedin has become more provincial in terms of dealer exhibitions.
Few senior artists bother to show here now, whereas in the 1960s to 1980s many leading artists exhibited their work in the city, often in the notable Bosshard Gallery which occupied the same premises his gallery now does in Dowling St.
Last year he held an exhibition of works by McCahon (1919-87), followed by one of Tony Fomison (1919-87), and the idea of showing works by major dead artists grew.
Through his contacts, McDowell has assembled 11 works by Hodgkins dating from the 1920s to the 1940s. They are priced from $20,000, for the drawings, to $250,000, for the oil painting Gloxinia.
All were painted in Europe or the UK, where she spent most of her life and is considered a leading British modernist artist.
Some come from galleries in Auckland and Wellington, others from private collections.
Some came from an eccentric American who lived in Auckland but recently returned to the US, and others have only arrived from the UK in the past couple of years, he said.
"Some of the most interesting things are who they belonged to a long time ago."
A drawing of a man wearing a baker's hat (c1921) once belonged to John Piper, a British artist, and his wife Myfanwy, an art critic. They were friends and younger contemporaries of Hodgkins and were at the forefront of avant-garde art in the mid-20th century.
The Pipers also owned a drawing that was the study for the painting Sabrina's Garden (1934), which is in the Bristol City Art Gallery. Hodgkins said of it: "The original painting of Sabrina's Garden with its two wooden figures is, incidentally, my favourite of that vintage 1930-40".
Jane Saunders and Hannah Ritchie, friends and former art students of Hodgkins, once owned Gloxinia, an oil painting from the mid-1920s when Hodgkins was experimenting with cubism. Hodgkins painted a double portrait of the two women in 1922, which is now in the Hocken Collections, a gift of Charles Brasch.
Saunders also owned The Water Mill, a gouache painted in 1943 during World War 2. It was in dull blues and greys, which might have reflected the war, but there were patches of an extraordinary yellow, McDowell said.
Another friend, potter Amy Krauss, with whom Hodgkins stayed at Corfe Castle in Dorset during World War 2, owned The Weir (1940). As with several of the works in the exhibition, it was originally exhibited at the Lefevre Galleries in London where Hodgkins exhibited regularly.
See it
"Frances Hodgkins" opens at Brett McDowell Gallery in Dowling St tomorrow and continues for three weeks.
