A new exhibition explores Frances Hodgkins' relationship with those she painted. Importantly, not all of the artist's sitters found her a warm and witty woman, writes Bruce Munro.
The face staring out at viewers is slender, sensitive, lily white with pink blushing cheeks. Her eyes are dark and curiously accepting.
But all attention is directed to the young woman's hair; a bright, auburn crown glowing in unseen daylight, tied loosely at the nape of her neck and trailing over one shoulder.
This is Babette, painted by Frances Hodgkins in 1905, in what would become a turning-point year for one of Dunedin and New Zealand's most important artists.
Her subject, the sitter, was 14-year-old Alice Berretti (later Capewell).
Both were living in Paraparaumu, north of Wellington, where Hodgkins had sought refuge following a traumatic incident a few months earlier.
Babette is one of 16 works by Hodgkins in an exhibition opening today at Dunedin Public Art Gallery.
"Frances Hodgkins: Sitting for Frances'' explores the relationship between the artist and her sitters through a mix of portraits and studies.
The gallery has accumulated one of the most important collections of the artist's work.
The pieces in this exhibition are largely drawn from the gallery's collection, complemented by loans from Olveston, the Hocken Collections and the Dowse Art Museum, Lower Hutt.
Born and raised in Dunedin by parents who supported the arts, Hodgkins attended the Dunedin School of Art and won a New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts award before leaving for Europe in 1901.
She returned to New Zealand three years later, but headed back to Europe in 1906.
Hodgkins was the first New Zealander to have work exhibited by the Royal Academy of Arts, in London, and was the first woman to be appointed an instructor at Colarossi's art school in Paris.
She has been described as a witty, energetic and outspoken woman.
After World War 1, Hodgkins went back to France.
She was influenced by Matisse and Derain, but from the late 1920s developed her own imaginative and strongly coloured style.
Later in her career, she was a key figure in British Modernism.
Hodgkins is one of New Zealand's truly influential artists. Among those who cite her impact is artist Colin McCahon.
In the December, 1966 edition of literary magazine Landfall, McCahon says "There was one painting in the [Dunedin] Gallery I loved above all else, Frances Hodgkins' Summer. It sang from the wall, warm and beautiful, beautiful faces beaming from summer blossoms. It was strong and kind and lovely''.
The 1912 watercolour on charcoal image of a woman and girl sitting with a baby on a summer's day displays the artist's ability to capture the emotion of her sitters and imbue the scene with warmth.
Sometimes, Hodgkins knew the sitters well, gallery public programmes manager Robyn Notman says.
The male subject of Mr and Mrs Moffat Lindner and Hope, painted in 1916, was a fellow artist and supporter whom she had met when she first visited Europe.
From her letters, it is known that Mr Lindner reminded Hodgkins of her own father, and that she was charmed by the couple's daughter.
"She wrote about meeting the family and having them sit against his studio window ... and about what a charming and lovely family they were, and how delighted she was to paint them,'' Ms Notman says.
Colourful The Farmer's Daughter is another work - a rarer Hodgkins oil on canvas, painted in 1929 and purchased by the gallery in 2010 - in which known links between artist and subject can be seen in the painting itself.
The farmer's daughter was Annie Coggan, of Somerset, south England.
She had been asked to "keep an eye'' on Hodgkins, who was having some "ups and downs'' trying to make a living as an artist, Ms Notman says.
"Hodgkins was an endearing character who was perceptive about human nature,'' Ms Notman says.
"People warmed to her and she warmed to them and so she did have these very supportive friendships.
"I think that comes through in this wonderful portrait which has a lot of warmth, while also being a very modern, experimental painting.''
For other works by Hodgkins, the sitters and their relationship can, so far, only be guessed at.
Maori Girl is an early watercolour, painted by Hodgkins in 1896.
Is the way the unknown subject is given the same detailed and realistic treatment as paintings of Europeans done by Hodgkins during the same period an indication of an equally close relationship?
"There's still a lot of room for scholarship,'' curatorial intern Ane Tonga says.
Some of that research has thrown up one particular instance in which Hodgkins and her sitter did not have the usual cordial relationship.
Miss Tonga has sourced a 1976 newspaper article in which Alice Capewell, the inspiration for Babette, talks about that encounter.
It was May, 1905, when Hodgkins and her friend Dorothy Richmond knocked on the door of the Berretti family, in Paraparaumu, seeking someone to carry their easels and cases.
Alice volunteered.
She spent a fortnight tramping the dunes with them during their painting trips and also sat for Hodgkins while she painted her portrait.
Unknown to Alice, Hodgkins had spent the past several months preparing to get married.
She was engaged to T. W. B. Wilby, an English writer she had met during her sea voyage to Europe in 1901.
She had been winding up her affairs in Wellington, and in May had travelled to Dunedin to say goodbye to friends, when the engagement was suddenly broken, probably by Mr Wilby.
A couple of sentences in letters to her mother do not give a lot away about how Hodgkins felt.
Did it mean little to her?
Or did it shape her choices and future?
Strong clues come from the way she related to Alice.
The usually opinionated, lively, humorous woman was "rather serious ... not very talkative, in contrast to to the very friendly Miss Richmond'', the 92-year-old Alice Capewell recalled.
Within a year Hodgkins had rebooked her voyage to Europe.
But this time the goal was not a wedding and children.
She would have many male friends but marriage would not be seriously considered again.
Art would be her life and her legacy.
The exhibition
"Frances Hodgkins: Sitting for Frances'' is on at Dunedin Public Art Gallery until April 10.
