Self Portrait: Still Life

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)

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