FRANCES HODGKINS | THE PICNIC

Lila Sampson, a friend of the Artist, and thence by descent to the previous owner

Their sale, Sotheby's London, 18th June 1997, lot 57

Whitford Fine Art, London, where acquired by the present owner, 1998

We are grateful to Mary Kisler for her kind assistance with the cataloguing of the present work.

This work was most probably painted in Brittany, circa 1914. Frances Hodgkins traveled from New Zealand to Europe in 1901 and first visited France in the same year, attending Norman Garstin's sketching class at Caudebec. The coastal town of Concarneau, where there was a school of Anglo-American water-colourists led by Gaugin's friend and biographer Charles Morice, seems a probable setting for this work. Hodgkins had first discovered Concarneau in 1910 and had settled there again at the Atlantic Hotel until war broke out in August of 1914.