Untitled. From the series: 'Hitchhiking in France'

In the summer of 1952, while visiting from Wellington, Helen Hitchings hitchhiked across France to join her friend Douglas MacDiarmid in Cannes. Travelling alone, she wore a dagger at her belt for protection. Supplies of coffee and wine were obviously important, as were a reliable car, a good dress, and the company of friendly travelling companions.

This is one of six colourful sketches that MacDiarmid did as illustrations for a travel article that Hitchings had written about the journey. Sadly there is no record of the article ever being published.

Douglas MacDiarmid started painting and drawing in the early 1940s, when he moved to Christchurch for university. Joining the city’s vibrant art world, he began to produce highly distinctive paintings of the people and places in his life. In 1950 MacDiarmid moved to Europe, where he spent most of the rest of his life. 

Helen Hitchings and Douglas MacDiarmid had met in Wellington in 1949. Hitchings was an influential art dealer - at the age of just 28 she opened Wellington's first modern art-dealer gallery on Bond Street. She gave MacDiarmid his first commercial exhibition in May 1950 and in 1951 travelled to London to hold an exhibition of contemporary New Zealand painting (including work by MacDiarmid).