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1928, Cedric Morris, Portrait of Frances Hodgkins -- Auckland Art Gallery

From the gallery label:

 

Cedric Morris completed this portrait of his longtime friend, the painter Frances Hodgkins (1869-1947), a few months before she joined the Seven and Five Society in 1929. Hodgkins was 60 years old at the time, and Morris unforgivingly depicts her age with flaccid cheeks and a sagging double chin. Signalling her longstanding engagement with avant-garde painting, he emphasises the bold red-and-green colour scheme of her costume against the decorative backdrop of a patterned curtain, perhaps a Māori täniko weaving. Seating her frontally while placing her head in three-quarter profile, Morris creates a slight asymmetry which evokes the older artist's eccentricity. Morris's faux-naïve directness and modernist use of form and colour were hallmarks of the Seven and Five Society's lyrical painting style around 1928.

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Uploaded on February 14, 2024
Taken on February 14, 2024