The well-known New Zealand expatriate artist Frances Hodgkins travelled to Ibiza in October 1932, remaining on the island until July 1933. These were high times for the artist, who relished living and painting in the island’s sharp light immensely. Hodgkins kept company with fellow New Zealand painters Maude Burge, Gwen Knight and May Smith, whom she fondly referred to as “my three friends”. At this time Hodgkins painted still-life subjects out in the landscape as opposed to indoors. Everyday objects were often arranged on a table, or sometimes directly on the ground, with the Ibiza landscape extending into the distance beyond. She commented at the time, “In this clear ivory light every common object looks important and significant … things appear in stark simplicity minus all detail – nothing corked up … or hidden as in the grey, or brown, light of the north.”

(New Dawn fades, November 2018)