Untitled (Textile design no III)

Frances Hodgkins (1869-1947) is one of New Zealand’s most celebrated expatriate painters, but her work as a textile designer is little known. She created these lively images during a brief stint in Manchester, England, in 1925.

Hogkins’ designs have many of the qualities of her art - exuberance, freshness, and a unique sense of colour. They may also have influenced her painting.

In the late 1920s, Hodgkins became increasingly concerned with colour and pattern. Her landscapes and still lifes, exhibited with the experimental Seven and Five Society, presented free-floating motifs in richly decorative compositions. By the time she died, in 1947, she was one of the leading modern painters in England.