PROVENANCE Mrs A L Wright Macclesfield, purchased Wellington, New Zealand, 1904. Mr W Ryle Wright, Swanage, England, 1974. In present collection by inheritance

EXHIBITED Exhibition of Oil and Water Colour Paintings by Miss Hodgkins and Miss D K Richmond, McGregor Wright Art Gallery, 24 February 1904 - 23 March 1904 New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts, 16th Annual Exhibition New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts Gallery

REFERENCE Frances Hodgkins database number FH0431 completefranceshodgkins.com

Frances Hodgkins spent nearly five months in Morocco between the end of November 1902 and late April 1903. She fell in love with the architecture, the sparkling sunshine and the bustling, exotic nature of everyday life, not least in the medina and the souk with its ornately carved arched gateway and red tiled roofed shops. Fellahin who brought their produce in from the countryside simply spread out their wares on cloths in the open air. Hodgkins and her companion, a Mrs Ashington, were hounded by curious onlookers every time she tried to paint activities in there, until English artist Alfred East recommending setting up in a doorway. She had to work very fast, creating sketches that could be worked up later as well as more detailed watercolours for exhibition. Some she posted to her sister, Isabel Field, in Wellington, who inscribed Hodgkins' initials on several in the hope of making sales that might boost her sister's endeavours.

As the weather warmed in March, Hodgkins moved to Tétouan, at the base of the Riff Mountains. She wrote to fellow artist Dorothy Kate Richmond on 23 March; 'Come to Tetuan . . . The whiteness & pearliness of the town simply defies you - you cant get it pure & brilliant enough & the shadows drive one silly - you race after them, pause one frenzied moment to decide on a blue mauve yellow or green shadow - when up & over the wall & away & the wretched things gone for that day at least & you are gazing at a glaring blank wall & wondering why on earth you ever started to sketch it...' She spent days in the medina's narrow streets, and with fewer people about was able to make numerous studies of children and the town's famous dye pits. Food stalls hugged the lanes either side, the traders and their produce protected from the late spring sun by striped awnings. Hodgkins was particularly taken by the bamboo poles used to support the cloth, their angular nature adding dynamism to depictions of the architectural surroundings.

Hodgkins returned to England at the end of April 1903, spending several months working up her sketches into exhibition quality watercolours. She had a major triumph when her portrait of 'Fatima' was hung on the line at the Royal Academy at the beginning of May, the first New Zealand artist to have that honour. Nine more Moroccan watercolours were part of a group show at the Fine Art Society, London, in July. But promises had to be kept, and Hodgkins returned to her mother in Wellington just before Christmas, bringing her remaining watercolours.

Sweetstuff Stall was first exhibited as Sweet Shop, Tetuan at McGregor Wright Gallery, Wellington 24 February - 23 March 1904. Almost certainly part of the composition was rapidly produced en plein air in Tétouan, producing an abstract effect on the periphery of the work, while the faces of the children and the sweet seller are highly worked up - we sense the brooding nature of the turbaned seller, well used to swarms of eager children. A beautifully delineated terracotta urn stands beside him, catching the viewer's attention. The little boy in the foreground has turned away, his expression intent, as if wondering where he can get a coin, while a girl peers at the selection before her, determined to make the right choice before payment. Two boys look on from the back of the group, again each face highly individualised. It is a tight and dynamic composition. One boy who has his back to us appears to have had a pigtail added later. The watercolour was exhibited again later in 1904 at the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts in October as Sweet Stuff Stall. Whereas in the earlier exhibition it was priced at only five guineas, it now bore the higher price of £21. It is possible that Hodgkins exhibited the work in a sketchier form earlier in the year, and when it didn't sell, decided to work it up further into the polished watercolour we see today.

MARY KISLER