Tanks, Barrels and Drums

Location

Country: UK
City: London
Place: Department for International Trade, Old Admiralty Building

This semi-abstract landscape by New Zealander, Frances Hodgkins has surrealistic undertones, lurid colour and a strange spatial ambiguity between the foreground and background. A number of metal or wooden objects that resemble enlarged pieces of military equipment are scattered in front of a building. Painted in 1937, Tanks, Barrels and Drums hints at the strain and anxiety that the artist, by then in her 70s and living in Dorset, England, was feeling at the prospect of the imminent outbreak of war.

Frances Hodgkins was born in 1869 in Dunedin, New Zealand. She came to Europe in 1901, and travelled a great deal, settling in Paris in 1908. An exhibition of her work in 1928 was a big success and gained her membership of the influential 7 & 5 Society. Since her death her reputation as an influential colourist and significant modernist painter has continued to grow.

Frances Hodgkins was born in Dunedin on the South Island of New Zealand. She trained at the Dunedin School of Art, going on to work as an art tutor and producing paintings and illustrations for publications. In 1901 she left New Zealand for Europe, travelling through France and Morocco, before settling in London in 1913. Her work featured in several group shows including at the Royal Academy (1905) and with the Seven and Five Society (from 1929). In the 1930s and 1940s, Hodgkins’ work was shown in exhibitions of modern British art, alongside artists such as John Piper, Henry Moore and Paul Nash. In 1940 she was one of a group of artists representing Britain at the Venice Biennale. Her double portrait, Loveday and Ann: Two Women with a Basket of Flowers (1915) was acquired by the Tate in 1944. She was part of an important group exhibition of work by Francis Bacon, Henry Moore, Matthew Smith and Graham Sutherland, held in 1945 at the Lefevre Gallery, London. Despite the artistic milieu that she was part of, and her expertise at absorbing and adapting the colour, energy and techniques of artists such as Matisse and Braque, Hodgkins’ artistic reputation was overlooked in mid-century accounts of modern British art, as was the case with many other women artists of that time. By 1969, however, her artistic reputation began to revive with a centenary exhibition that toured New Zealand, Australia and London. Several monographs of her work were published in the 1990s, which introduced her work to new audiences.

Places

Subjects

tank, barrel, still life, landscape C20th, tree, field, fence

Materials & Techniques

canvas, oil, oil painting

Artist

Frances Hodgkins (1869 - 1947)

Title

Tanks, Barrels and Drums

Date

1937

Medium

Oil on canvas

Dimensions

height: 62.50 cm, width: 75.50 cm

Acquisition

Purchased from Leicester Galleries, November 1964

Inscription

br: Frances Hodgkins

GAC number

6752