PROVENANCE Wertheim Galleries, London, whose name appears verso in pencil; Purchased by N L Hamilton Smith Esq. 1946, Lefevre Galleries, London Phillips, London, 26 November 1996 Dunbar Sloane, 17 November 2010 Private Collection

EXHIBITED Frances Hodgkins Retrospective Exhibition Lefevre Galleries, London 1946

REFERENCE Frances Hodgkins database number FH0896 completefranceshodgkins.com

The vernacular stone buildings scattered across villages and farms in the Alpes-Maritimes above Cagnes sur Mer are narrow, looming over the winding lanes like upended shoeboxes. Their deep-set windows provide vistas sweeping down to the sea from the south facing windows, framed by shutters that provide summer shade and attempt to insulate from the thin, winter air. At the end of 1929, Frances Hodgkins travelled to the Riviera, staying with two friends at La Pastorale, which writer Linda Gill has identified as a farmhouse on the outskirts of La Gaude. Once her hosts had departed, Hodgkins was left in charge of the house, in the company of a housekeeper and three cats. A combination of deep snows and isolation caused a change of plan, for though she needed to be on her own to work, she also longed for warmth and company. Accordingly, in the New Year she fled the short distance across the valley to St Jeannet.

Before leaving Pastorale, Hodgkins braved the bitter weather to produce The Mill Stream, setting up her sketchblock on the slope below the cluster of farm buildings. Throughout her later career, the artist often painted rivers and weirs, intrigued by their evanescent, constantly moving flow. In the watercolour, the two streams that spurt out beneath arches below the mill merge before tumbling down into a pool in the foreground. The watercolour accurately captures the warm tones of the stone walls and the red Marseille tiles on the roofs. In a photograph taken in 2017 of another former mill in the village of La Gaude, we can clearly see two similar arches at the building's base.

The stream on the left appears to be channelled by stone steps and a block wall, a similar low curving structure sweeping round to ultimately join where the two waters meet. Hodgkins has rapidly sketched in bushes and shrubs for future reference, as well as particular outlines and angles in bold brushstrokes.

The one oil painting from her time at La Pastorale, painted on her return to England, is clearly derived from The Mill Stream: https://completefranceshodgkins. com/objects/26720/pastorale. It chills the bone, for she has placed more emphasis on the foreboding buildings, painted in dark charcoal tones as if overshadowed by the memory of the cold. The shrubs have been wittily transformed into a single palm tree in the centre of the final composition. Palms add a reminder of sunshine, but were unlikely to survive at that altitude, although common nearer to the sea.

MARY KISLER