Frances Hodgkins

The Lake

c.1930–5

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Not on display

Artist: Frances Hodgkins 1869–1947
Medium: Gouache on paper
Dimensions: Support: 432 x 546 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Presented by the Contemporary Art Society 1940
Reference: N05130

Catalogue entry

N05130 THE LAKE c. 1930–5

Inscr. ‘Frances Hodgkins’ b.l.
Gouache, 17×21 1/2 (45×54·5).
Presented by the Contemporary Art Society 1940.
Coll: Purchased by the C.A.S. from the Lefevre Gallery 1940.
Exh: Lefevre Gallery, April 1940 (13).
Lit: Arthur R. Howell, Frances Hodgkins, Four Vital Years, 1951, p.111, as ‘River Garden, Bridgnorth’.

Although exhibited in 1940 as ‘The Lake’ this may be a recollection of the Severn at Bridgnorth. Frances Hodgkins conducted a painting class there in 1926 and paid several subsequent visits, notably in 1930 and 1932 when she was working there with Hannah Ritchie.

Stylistically this painting, with its sunflowers, boats and garden table, appears to relate to the oil ‘Sabrina's Garden’ (Bristol Art Gallery, repr. Myfanwy Evans, Frances Hodgkins, 1948, pl.9), which has been dated 1935, although a drawing for this composition is believed to be of 1930 or 1932. Miss Hannah Ritchie wrote (26 August 1951): ‘while I was at work at Bridgnorth in 1932 F.H. made drawings further along the river bank.... It seemed to me that it [“Sabrina's Garden”] is a picture done in her studio after a good deal of thinking round the material she gathered on the 1932 visit to that inspiring bit of the riverside in Bridgnorth.’

Published in:
Mary Chamot, Dennis Farr and Martin Butlin, The Modern British Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, London 1964, I