Frances Mary hodgkins

SUMMARY Frances Hodgkins was one of a number of expatriate New Zealanders during the early twentieth century who lived in Britain or Europe, where it was easier to find supportive friendship circles for their lives as artists or as people attracted to their own sex. In this article, I explore the primacy of women in Hodgkins' life and read this as lesbian and argue that many of these relationships were sexual, from the evidence of her letters, which suggest that she moved in lesbian worlds of work and friendship. I also discuss the financial and emotional support given by her male homosexual as well as her lesbian friends who made her life as an artist possible.