Frances Hodgkins
Self Portrait: Still Life

Artwork Detail
In later life, Hodgkins invariably felt uncomfortable about being photographed, partly perhaps because she was an older woman competing in a young Modernist market. She never painted a traditional self-portrait, but instead created highly individual, semi-abstracted groups of favourite objects – scarves, shoes, belts, jewellery and flowers, which provide what today seems like a Post-modern metaphor for the self. This strategy of self-representation was very unusual for this period.
Although the majority of Hodgkins’ oil paintings are on canvas, a few like this one are on cardboard, providing a smoother surface on which to work.
(Frances Hodgkins - Leitmotif, 2005)
- Title
- Self Portrait: Still Life
- Artist/creator
- Production date
- circa 1935
- Medium
- oil on cardboard
- Dimensions
- 970 x 840 mm
- Credit line
- Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, purchased 1963
- Accession no
- 1963/11/2
- Other ID
- 1963/21 Old Accession Number, FH1084 Frances Hodgkins Catalogue Raisonné Number, FH1935_017 Old Frances Hodgkins Number, 35.12a RW Number
- Copyright
- No known copyright restrictions
- Department
- New Zealand Art
- Display status
- Not on display
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