Overview
Pleasure Garden was painted in the summer of 1932, one of a series of watercolours inspired by a sketching holiday Hodgkins took in Bridgnorth in Shropshire, England. Unlike her earlier Impressionistic works, Hodgkins’ later paintings display an unconventional and more abstract style.
The separate components of Pleasure Garden - sunflowers, canvas awnings and statues - are transformed by Hodgkins into a visual fantasy. She enlivens this idyllic scene with calligraphic brushstrokes and inventive colour harmonies.
Despite the sense of tranquility this painting conveys, it caused an enormous amount of controversy back here in New Zealand. Hodgkins’ work was critically acclaimed in England and Europe, but reaction to it in New Zealand, her country of birth, was largely indifferent or hostile. While Hodgkins exhibited here until she left for Europe in 1901, the market for her work dwindled soon afterwards.
In 1948 members of the Canterbury Society of Arts proposed to purchase some works by Frances Hodgkins and asked the British Council to send a selection from different periods of her life. Six paintings were sent but the Society decided not to buy any of them. This caused a public outcry resulting in three supporters of Hodgkins being deposed from the Art Society’s council.
One of these supporters, Barbara Frankel, decided to organise a public subscription to purchase Pleasure Garden. Money was quickly raised and the painting was bought. However, when it was offered to the City Council for hanging in the city’s art gallery, the council turned the offer down. Public outcry turned to public outrage. The City Council referred the matter to their by-laws committee, who, on the advice of three ‘experts’, enforced the recommendation not to purchase the paintings. The City Council endorsed this decision.
It was quite a row. There were petitions, letters to the papers and much public debate. Pleasure Garden suddenly became one of the most famous paintings in the country.
When the Auckland Art Gallery offered to buy the work, it was re-offered to Christchurch. A new council accepted the painting in 1951 - nearly three years after it had first arrived in Christchurch. The struggle epitomised the reaction to modern paintings both in New Zealand and around the world. ‘On one hand was a coterie generally out of touch and out of sympathy with contemporary movements in art but firmly in control of the galleries and schools; opposed to them stood a small, valiant, embattled minority, not themselves free from their own kind of self-complacency and sometimes provoked into tasteless extravagance of conduct; while beyond these factions lay an amorphous general public normally indifferent to art and, when put to the test, sensible to its finer appeal.’ (1).
See the Pleaseure Garden at Christchurch Art Gallery's Collection Online
Reference
(1) McCormick, E H. (1954). The Expatriate: a study of Frances Hodgkins. Wellington: New Zealand University Press. p 257.
Text originally published in Tai Awatea, Te Papa's onfloor multimedia database.