Reference p. 176 Works of Frances Hodgkins in New Zealand by E H McCormack, Auckland City Art Gallery, 1954 - Oxford University Press

Provenance: Private Collection, Christchurch, since 1975 Purchased by present owner from R G Bell & Co Auctioneers, Kaiapoi

Previously in the collection of Mrs Esmond Atkinson, Wellington. Inherited by above from D K Richmond, artist who acquired it directly from the artist.

Exhibited: McGregor Wright and Co's Gallery, Wellington, 1904, Catalogue no. 20

In 1902 on the boat on the way to Morocco with her English painting friend Mrs Ashington, Hodgkins had bumped into the Dunedin collectors David and Marie Theomin from whom she obtained a commission to paint a scene in Tangiers. She had completed the Theomin commission at the beginning of 1903 and referred to it in a letter to her artist friend Dorothy Kate Richmond:

I wish I could have sent you my large picture of the market - it is the apple or rather the onion of my eye - much the same sort of subject a jumble of onions melons & oranges- It is going tomorrow to Mr. Theomin - I am going to eschew vegetables after this with a comfortable feeling I have done my duty by them…'

To Miss D. K. Richmond. 7 March 1903

In fact, Hodgkins ended up doing at least three versions of this market scene and the one offered here is the painting she gave to Dorothy.

Our eye is moved in a zigzag from the bottom left to the middle plane on the right, across the colourful pile of onions and melons. Our eye travels over the heads of the Arab sellers and buyers looking at the case of lemons and oranges in the middle ground to the final part of the zigzag created by the roof of the architectural structure the colours of which repeat in more muted tones the fruit and vegetables in the foreground.

Globules of watercolour, with the occasional outline, create the dissipated form of the fruit and vegetables in the hot Moroccan sun also indicated by the washed out white building on the left and the summarily indicated blue and green shadowed drapery of the furthest figures. ANGELA MACKIE

References:

Buchanan, Dunn and Eastmond: Frances Hodgkins Paintings and Drawings, Auckland University Press, 2001
Drayton, Joanna: Frances Hodgkins: A Private Viewing, Godwit, 2005 Dunn, Michael: New Zealand Painting: A Concise History, 2003, Auckland University Press