New Zealand Artist Frances Hodgkins

Paintings by Frances Hodgkins

Frances Hodgkins (1869 – 1947)

There is speculation that New Zealand watercolorist and painter Frances Hodgkins in fact was a closeted bisexual woman. She never married. In 1903 she met Dorothy Kate Richmond (1861-1935), an artist from Auckland with whom she travelled in France and Italy before they returned together to New Zealand in December 1903. Terra the New Zealand Encyclopedia reads: Dorothy Richmond was the first of many beloved friends whose faith in her talent, backed up by financial and practical help, sustained Frances Hodgkins. (…)  [but a few years later Frances returned to England on her own, where she met] several single women with a serious interest in painting who took the place of Dorothy Richmond in her life. See also Joyce M. Youmans’ article about Frances Hodgkins at glbtq.com.
Frances Hodgkins was constantly on the move through out her working life. Frances Hodgkins’ life as an expatriate is well documented in her letters to her mother. She travelled and worked in England, Italy, France, Spain and other countries before she finally settled in England at the start of the World War II. In March 1947, a few weeks before her 78th birthday, Frances Hodgkins was admitted to a hospital in Dorchester, England where she died a couple of months later.