Spanish Shrine

Travel was always essential to Frances Hodgkins' health and to her work, although its discomforts and financial constraints pressed on her as she grew older. On 3 January 1933 she wrote to a friend from the Hotel Belear in Ibiza, Spain: '. . . I would rather be here in the sunshine than alone in the Studio - it was getting me badly. The SHOW is the THING - I must set London talking - they expect it of me . . . but down here I forget all about it & think only of the jolly things I see around me & the awful urge to get at them'. Hodgkins painted Spanish Shrine in England, after her return from Spain, working from watercolour sketches. It was a very successful work, exhibited several times during the 1930s and '40s. Sunday Times critic Eric Newton praised the balance she achieved: '. . . between the world of her eye and the world of her mind's eye . . . the picture is both a symbol and a description and the two are interwoven'. A calmly-beautiful work, Spanish Shrine shows two peasant women, carrying containers of water and fruit, either side of a religious statue, possibly Mary or a local saint. The three figures share a monumental, iconic stillness; the statue is in an attitude of prayer, and the women, temporarily halted in their daily tasks, have eyes alight with the certainty of their faith. (from The Guide, 2001)

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