B.
The art of war
Behind the scenes
The Great Art War is currently on at the Court Theatre
It tells the story, in music, of the spat that developed in Christchurch in the early 1950s when, to cut a long story short, the Robert McDougall Art Gallery decided not to purchase a painting by Frances Hodgkins, but then had little choice in accepting it as a gift when a group of citizens had a whipround and just bought it anyway.
The painting is 'Pleasure Garden' and here it is:
The work seems so inoffensive to our jaded eyes, but at the time the dispute was cast as a titanic clash between the forces of revolution and reaction. In a gentle, Christchurchy sort of way, that is.
You can read more about the painting, read about Bill Sutton's painting 'Homage to Frances Hodgkins', see a sketch of that painting, and see who the contributors were.
And while I have your attention, can we just make it quite clear that the title of the work is 'Pleasure Garden'. Like Handel's 'Messiah' it has no definite article.
Frances Hodgkins Pleasure Garden 1932
Collection of Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū; presented by a Group of Subscribers, 1951
Related
Collection
Bill Sutton Bill Sutton study for 'Homage to Frances Hodgkins'
This is one of a series of preparatory drawings for William Sutton’s painting ‘Homage to Frances Hodgkins’. The painting, now destroyed,was a group portrait of the leading supporters of the controversial purchase of Hodgkins’s The Pleasure Garden.
Collection
Frances Hodgkins Pleasure Garden
“You say in yr last [letter] that I will not tag on to Colonial life after staying away so long – you surely don’t expect & want me to settle down into a Maiden Aunt do you & throw up career & ambition & lose the precious ground I have gained – you are much too dear and unselfish for that I am sure. I am coming out merely to see you & Sis & the children, to be with you for a while & then to return to my work like any man of business. To make you happy I must be happy myself. I want to see you badly & feel I must come soon at no matter what sacrifice. But do realise Mother that it’s on this side of the world that my work and future career lie. I grieve sometimes that you do not understand this more.” – Frances Hodgkins, excerpt from a letter to her mother, Rachel Hodgkins, 1911
(Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection, 6 August 2022- )