Frank Hodgkinson
(Australia 28 Apr 1919–20 Oct 2001)
- Title
- The night is a tree of pain
- Place of origin
-
Sydney →
New South Wales →
Australia
- Year
- 1963
- Media category
- Painting
- Materials used
- oil on hardboard
- Dimensions
-
triptych: each panel 182.9 x 121.9cm board; 182.9 x 365.8cm board overall; 184.5 x 368.1 x 5.5cm frame overall:
a - left panel; 182.9 x 121.9cm
b - centre panel; 182.9 x 121.9cm
c - right panel; 182.9 x 121.9cm
- Signature & date
- Signed and dated l.r. corner right panel [part c], black oil "Hodgkinson/ 63". Signed c. verso right panel [part c], white oil "Frank Hodgkinson". Signed c. verso centre panel [part b], white oil "Frank Hodgkinson". Signed c. verso left panel [part a], white oil "Frank Hodgkinson".
- Credit
- Purchased under the terms of the Florence Turner Blake Bequest 1963
- Accession number
- OA6.1963.a-c
- Copyright
- © AGNSW
- Location
- Not on display
- Further information
'The night is a tree of pain' was painted at Hodgkinson's Clareville home on Sydney's Pittwater. He had been in Spain since 1958, following his win in the inaugural Helena Rubinstein Travelling Art Scholarship, and returned again in 1963, settling at Deya de Mallorca, where his neighbours included the poet Robert Graves, and fellow Australian artists John Olsen and Paul Haefliger.
In 1963, Hodgkinson wrote:
"The title ... is a line from a forgotten Indian poem ... not intended to be descriptive but rather to suggest a mood. Though the forms relate to earthy natural growth, human and animal life, the image which teased me was the monumental stillness of totems, a symmetry suggested by the gum tree, natural totems rather than the carved and painted aboriginal ones, creating a tortured and ecstatic silence such as may be experienced in the bush at night".Applying the knowledge he had gained abroad of Abstract Expressionism and the school of texture or matter painting - exemplified in the work of Spanish artists Tàpies, Milliares, and Suarez - Hodgkinson attempted to create in his paintings of the early 1960s, a uniform all-over texture, which evoked the coarse beauty of raw earth and a strong sense of natural substance, whilst making particular reference to the rugged bush of the area around his home.
Australian Art Department, AGNSW, 2001
- Bibliography (3)
-
Barry Pearce (Australia) (Author), Australian art: in the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Domain, 2000, 244 (colour illus.), 301.
Lou Klepac (Australia; Croatia, b.1936) (Editor), Barry Pearce (Australia) (Author), Hodgkinson, Roseville, 1994, 68, (colour illus.), (colour illus., detail), 173. plate no. 53
The Sydney Morning Herald 27 Feb 1963, 27 Feb 1963.
- Exhibition history (1)
-
Hodgkinson 63: new work by Frank Hodgkinson (1963), Hungry Horse Gallery, 26 Feb 1963–Mar 1963.
