This article explores the summer that New Zealand artists Dorothy K. Richmond and Frances Hodgkins spent in the Dutch artist colony of Rijsoord in 1903. Drawing on visual and archival evidence, it positions “Wilhelmina”, an oil painting recently acquired by Te Papa, as a product of Richmond’s stay in Rijsoord and sheds light on the social, cultural and artistic context in which it was painted. With reference to traditional Dutch dress, I interpret the painting as evidence of Richmond’s engagement with South Holland culture and daily village life. Moreover, by highlighting connections in composition and subject matter between “Wilhelmina” and select works by Frances Hodgkins, I argue that “Wilhelmina” visualises the fruitful artistic cross-pollination between Richmond and Hodgkins in the early years of the twentieth century.

Artist colonies, D. K. Richmond, Dorothy K. Richmond, Frances Hodgkins, genre painting, women artists

When the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa acquired an oil painting by New Zealand artist Dorothy Kate (D.K.) Richmond (1861–1935) in 2022 (Fig. 1), it was referred to by its previous owners as “Lacemakers” and was thought to have been produced during Richmond’s time in Cornwall in the early twentieth century. However, once obscured by the painting’s backing, the work’s true title, “Wilhelmina”, is in fact inscribed in pencil on the painting’s stretcher.¹ Furthermore, as presented in this article, there is compelling evidence that Richmond painted “Wilhelmina” during her weeks-long stay, alongside fellow New Zealand artist Frances Hodgkins (1869–1947), in the small Dutch town of Rijsoord in August 1903. Drawing on visual and archival evidence, this article frames “Wilhelmina” as a product of Richmond’s engagement with South Holland culture and daily life in Rijsoord, as well as indicating fruitful artistic cross-pollination between Richmond and Hodgkins.

Figure 1. 

Dorothy Kate Richmond, “Wilhelmina”, 1903, oil on canvas, 675 × 715 mm. Te Papa, 1957-0009-65, purchased 2022.

Richmond and Hodgkins began corresponding in 1901, eager to connect as fellow New Zealand artists working in Europe at the turn of the twentieth century. Richmond clearly had both Hodgkins’ companionship and her artistic virtuosity front of mind, admitting that even before departing New Zealand shores she had ‘formed a strong wish’ to work alongside her and deeming Hodgkins’ work to be ‘far better than that of any of the teachers’ I have seen since I came [to Europe].’² The feeling was reciprocated: Hodgkins, writing to her sister Isabel Field, concluded, ‘Miss Richmond…is certainly the only person that I am at all keen to throw in my lot with.’³ The pair met in July that year in the Normandy town of Caudebec-en-Caux, both taking part in the sketching party led by the Irish painter Norman Garstin (1847–1926). A leading figure of the Cornish Newlyn School, Garstin was to become instrumental in both artists’ time in Europe, providing tutelage, mentorship, endorsements within European artistic circles and, importantly, access to an artistic network in Europe.

Hodgkins’ correspondence in 1901 speaks to the profound impression that summer and its spirit of artistic collegiality had on her. ‘It has been a very precious time to me these last two months’, she wrote home, ‘full of friendship and sympathy… every thing is given up to painting; we think and talk of nothing else.’⁴ Over the succeeding two years, Richmond and Hodgkins remained largely in step – both physically and artistically – with one another, travelling together through France, Italy and England. They were also firmly ensconced in Garstin’s circle, undertaking extended stays in Penzance, Cornwall, where he had his studio, and joining his 1902 sketching class in Dinan, Brittany. By late July 1903, when Garstin’s group arrived in the South Holland artist colony of Rijsoord for his annual summer trip, formative friendships had developed, both between the New Zealand artists and with their Irish mentor.

Situated on the dammed Waaltje River between Dordrecht and Rotterdam, the small Dutch town of Rijsoord was a popular artist colony during the summer months of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Dutch–American artist John Vanderpoel (1857–1911), a teacher at the Art Institute of Chicago, had been visiting since the 1880s, and by the early twentieth century the town was firmly on the radar of international artists, particularly American travellers and art school students from Paris and Karlsruhe.⁵ As Brian Dudley Barrett highlights, the practicalities of accessibility and accommodation constituted a significant part of various European villages’ and towns’ respective appeal for artist groups.⁶ In Rijsoord, a riverside inn called Hotel Warendorp (Fig. 2), run by Vrouwe Warendorp, offered convenient lodgings befitting travelling artists’ often limited budgets.⁷ As well as housing guestrooms and offering catering, Hotel Warendorp provided a hub for groups, with the large, naturally lit attic space serving as an artist studio where artists could work or display recent paintings for group discussion.⁸

In 1903, Garstin’s summer class numbered approximately 27 artists, Richmond and Hodgkins included.⁹ Along with Garstin, several in the party were by now firm artist-friends of Richmond and Hodgkins, including the English sisters Grace and Maud Nickalls and the Scotswoman Rosamond Marshall. Having pushed Hotel Warendorp to its limits, the artists’ accommodation was spread across the village (Hodgkins and Richmond lodged above the local grocer’s), but Hodgkins’ letters describe them all coming together for meals, viewing one another’s artworks and amusing themselves with leisure activities on the river. Photographs from the summer, such as one showing Richmond, Hodgkins and Marshall crossing the Rijksstraatweg Bridge with their painting supplies (Fig. 3), similarly reveal a spirited artistic community.

Figure 2. 

Detail of postcard sent from Frances Hodgkins to her mother, Rachel Hodgkins, on 13 August 1903, with a photograph of Hotel Warendorp. Field, Isabel Jane, 1867–1950: “Correspondence of Frances Hodgkins and family” / collected by Isabel Field, MS-Papers-0085-15, Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington.

Figure 3. 

Photographer unknown, Rosamond Marshall, Dorothy Kate Richmond and Frances Hodgkins in Rijsoord, Holland, 1903, digitised copy neg. E. H. McCormick Papers, E. H. McCormick Research Library, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, gift of Linda Gill, 2015.

For all its social advantages, however, when Garstin’s group arrived in Rijsoord in late July, Hodgkins was not overly impressed with the town. Her first letter home complains of uninteresting local scenery:

Rijsoord itself is a dull little place, & I can’t quite understand the Prof. [Garstin] pitching on it for a camping ground. There is a nice river but not anything one couldn’t get any where else. Windmills and cabbages & large white sabots [traditional wooden shoes] seem to be the principal features of the country. Barges don’t come up this way much & there is nothing specially Dutch about the landscape to attract one.¹⁰

To compound Hodgkins’ dissatisfaction, the weather was not conducive to painting “en plein air”. While Hodgkins’ correspondence over the following month details some calm spells in which the sketching party could venture outdoors, overall the weather did not turn out for the artists. Writing in early September, Hodgkins summarised, ‘This has been a most trying month, storm and wind & rain and so cold we have been living in our mackintoshes [...] We were really getting quite worn out battling with the elements & starting so many grey sketches & never finishing anything.’¹¹

With Hodgkins concluding that Rijsoord was ‘only a place for figures and pastoral subjects’, the uncooperative weather and lacklustre landscape may have spurred her and Richmond to focus primarily on genre painting during their stay in the Dutch town.¹² Certainly, several artworks resulting from their travels – many of which they exhibited back in New Zealand in 1904 – bear titles suggesting local figural subjects, including Hodgkins’ “A Dutch Milkmaid” and “A Dutch Idyll”, and Richmond’s “Dutch Woman Knitting” and “Little Dutch Girl”. Even if the travelling artists’ depictions of genre scenes were partly driven by necessity, their engagement with domestic subjects was particularly felicitous in the context of their Dutch travels. Portrayals of women engaging in everyday tasks in domestic settings were firmly rooted in the Dutch artistic tradition. Seventeenth-century artists of the Dutch Golden Age, such as Johannes Vermeer and Pieter de Hooch, often depicted women undertaking daily tasks such as needlework, preparing food or childminding, exemplified by Pieter de Hooch’s 1660s painting “Interior with a woman sewing and a child” (Fig. 4). Accordingly, in “Wilhelmina”, Richmond portrays a young woman sitting indoors beside a window, using the natural light to assist her knitting. The double-pointed needles indicate that she is knitting an item in the round, such as a hat or socks, but the figure’s tilted head, soft gaze and limp hands – still holding the thread between her fingers – suggest she is momentarily lost in thought.

Just as Hodgkins refers to sabots as a ‘principal feature’ of the Netherlands, in “Wilhelmina”, Richmond’s sitter wears accessories of traditional South Holland dress. A “keuvel” – a headdress made from tulle and trimmed with lace – adorns her head, showcasing Richmond’s ability to create texture and form with paint. Her depiction of the delicate, translucent headdress effectively evokes the netting fabric. Thicker pink-white strokes of paint create natural folds in the “keuvel” as it falls over the woman’s head and shoulders, and rather than finely detailing the veil’s intricate lace trim, Richmond’s economical mark-making on the figure’s proper left shoulder creates an effective impression of the patterned detail. Although hidden from view, the sitter is also wearing an “oorijzer” (ear iron) wrapped around her head. Unique to the Netherlands, “oorijzers” were initially developed to hold expensive lacewear in place but by the nineteenth century had become more decorative – a canvas for the display of accessories particular to different regions.¹³ In “Wilhelmina”, the figure’s covered “oorijzer” holds in place her “krullen” (literally “curls”) – conical metal spirals somewhat resembling tight golden ringlets at her temples. Whereas more affluent women wore “oorijzers” and “krullen” of pure gold, similar to one nineteenth-century example in the Victoria and Albert Museum collection, the dullness of Richmond’s figure’s “krullen” suggests they may be of more modest copper or brass.

Travelling artists were commonly interested in the customs and cultures of the towns in which artist colonies were established, with local goods or dress items featuring in many genre paintings. In Volendam, a fishing village and popular artist colony in North Holland, hotel proprietor Leendert Spaander even established an in-house studio with traditional furnishings to meet the demand for area-specific subjects.¹⁴ Local models were on hand to pose for visiting artists, often wearing traditional regional dress. Regional headdresses and “krullen”, for example, feature in several paintings of everyday Rijsoord life by the American artist Wilhelmina Douglas Hawley (1860–1958).¹⁵ Douglas Hawley, to whom Hodgkins refers in one of her letters as an apparently ‘magnificent watercolourist’, began visiting Rijsoord in 1892 and settled there in 1900, when she became engaged to a local Dutch farmer.¹⁶ Further, traditional dress was of such interest to three American painters under Douglas Hawley’s tutelage that they even dressed up in South Holland attire.¹⁷

Richmond and Hodgkins were exposed to traditional South Holland accessories such as the “keuvel” and “krullen” during their Rijsoord summer. According to Eliza Leypold Good, an American who visited Rijsoord in 1900, these accessories were not only worn for the interest of foreign artists, but were also proudly displayed by local women such as Vrouwe Warendorp, the matron of the hotel at which Garstin’s group was based. Good writes, ‘[Warendorp] contented herself with wearing the simple cone-shaped krüllen made of spiral gold wire. She called our attention, however, to the thickness of this wire, adding that there was none quite so heavy in the village.’¹⁸ Similarly, Hodgkins’ album from these travels includes several photographs of local women engaged in daily activities and wearing these items (Fig. 5). It is likely that Richmond solicited a local woman as her model for “Wilhelmina”. This was standard practice among visiting artists; in one letter home, Hodgkins recounts ‘a long day’s painting – nice little Dutch girl posing for me in orchard.’¹⁹ Given that Wilhelmina was a popular Dutch name, the title inscribed on the back of Richmond’s canvas probably identifies her sitter. As well as firmly locating “Wilhelmina” in the context of Richmond’s time in Rijsoord, the inclusion of these regional accessories in the painting visualises Richmond’s engagement with local South Holland culture.

Figure 4. 

Pieter de Hooch, “Interior with a woman sewing and a child”, c.1662–1668, oil on canvas, 546 × 451 mm. Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, inv. no. 195 (1958.7). © Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid.

Figure 5. 

Photograph of a Dutch woman in Frances Hodgkins’ photo album, 1903. McCormick, Eric Hall (Dr), 1906–1995: “Photographs”, PA1-o-764-20, Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington.

“Wilhelmina” also tells a convincing story about Richmond’s and Hodgkins’ parallel artistic enquiries. In particular, the composition of “Wilhelmina” is strongly reminiscent of Hodgkins’ 1902 watercolour painting “Susannah” (Fig. 6). Both paintings depict a young woman seated beside a window, with natural light filtering through, and flanked by two potted geraniums. Just as the regional “keuvel” adorns “Wilhelmina’s” head, “Susannah” features a traditional Breton cap. The two paintings have distinct differences, too: the sitters are positioned on opposite sides of the composition, Richmond’s perspective reveals more of the interior setting, and Hodgkins’ sitter looks directly towards the viewer. “Susannah” is painted in watercolour, while Richmond executed “Wilhelmina” in oil – her preferred medium at the time.²⁰ However, the strong subject and compositional correlation between the two paintings positions Hodgkins’ “Susannah” as a strong influence for Richmond’s painting “Wilhelmina”. Given the closeness of the two New Zealand artists and Richmond’s enduring support for Hodgkins’ artistic endeavours, it is very likely that Richmond was familiar with “Susannah”. Hodgkins seems to have considered it one of the most important artistic outcomes of her European travels at the turn of the century. Indeed, after her sister Isabel sold the work in New Zealand for £8, Hodgkins’ despondent letter in reply described ‘Suzanne’ as ‘the outcome of two months’ hard work at Penzance’ (although the work was possibly completed in Brittany). According to Hodgkins, Richmond even cried upon hearing of the unjust undervaluing of her friend’s artworks – a reaction that suggests her deep affection for the figure painting.²¹

As well as the visual connection between Hodgkins’ earlier “Susannah” and Richmond’s 1903 “Wilhelmina”, both works can also be linked to Hodgkins’ 1904 watercolour “A Dutch Housewife” (Fig. 7). Probably owing to the compositional similarities – particularly the proximity of the figure to the picture plane and the presence of a red potted geranium on the window ledge – Mary Kisler has identified “Susannah” as the basis for Hodgkins’ “A Dutch Housewife”.²² However, I suggest that Richmond’s “Wilhelmina” could also have influenced Hodgkins’ later work. Not only are the figures in each painting turned to the left-hand side of the picture, but they also both direct their gaze downwards towards their task at hand rather than locking eyes with the viewer. Like Richmond’s “Wilhelmina”, in “A Dutch Housewife” Hodgkins has paid close attention to regional accessories: as well as depicting the distinctive, translucent “keuvel”, which almost blends with the windowpane behind her, the sitter is polishing a large brass “melkkan” – a traditional Dutch milk can.

Notably, whereas Richmond’s “Wilhelmina” is dated 1903, Hodgkins’ “A Dutch Housewife” was painted in 1904, by which time she and Richmond had travelled back to New Zealand together. Indeed, E. H. McCormick reports that, according to the artist’s family, Hodgkins’ model for “A Dutch Housewife” was her sister’s laundress, Mrs Anderson, equipped with traditional Dutch accessories brought back from the Netherlands.²³ Given Richmond and Hodgkins’ joint stay in Rijsoord and the close interest they took in one another’s artistic production during this period, we can safely assume that Hodgkins was familiar with Richmond’s oil painting “Wilhelmina” by the time she painted “A Dutch Housewife” in New Zealand in 1904. Moreover, at Hodgkins and Richmond’s joint exhibition at the McGregor Wright Gallery, Richmond exhibited an oil painting entitled “Mina” in the accompanying catalogue, which may well correspond with “Wilhelmina”. Listed at £10.10, it was Richmond’s most highly priced work for sale, but the absence of “A Dutch Housewife” from this exhibition suggests it was not yet complete in February 1904. Therefore, although Hodgkins’ “A Dutch Housewife” likely sought to emulate “Susannah” – her earlier undervalued success – it also looks to Richmond’s “Wilhelmina” and the story it tells about daily life in South Holland. Both artists’ depictions of Dutch subjects were well received by New Zealand audiences and garnered unreserved praise when jointly exhibited at the Otago Art Society exhibition in November 1904. The “Otago Daily Times” asserted that Hodgkins’ watercolour was unexcelled ‘by anything exhibited this year and eclipse[s] even [Hodgkins’] previous clever work’, while the “Otago Evening Star” commended “Wilhelmina’s” ‘delicious softness’ and Richmond’s treatment of the genre subject, concluding that the work ‘must attract all who have an eye for the beautiful. The subject is of an everyday character… yet by putting feeling into the painting, Miss Richmond has managed to uplift her canvas into prominence.’²⁴

Figure 6. 

Frances Hodgkins, “Susannah”, 1902, watercolour, 510 × 390 mm. Private collection. Image courtesy of “The Complete Frances Hodgkins”.

Figure 7. 

Frances Hodgkins, “A Dutch Housewife”, 1904, watercolour on paper, 749 × 527 mm. Current location unknown. Image courtesy of “The Complete Frances Hodgkins”.

Although Richmond remained in New Zealand, practising and teaching painting in Wellington for the rest of her career, Hodgkins travelled back to Europe in 1906 and spent much of her time based in the Netherlands between 1907 and 1908. Despite disparaging the landscape and weather several years earlier, she returned to South Holland and Rijsoord on a number of occasions. She made a similar judgement about Rijsoord in 1908, explaining to her mother, ‘Here it is impossible to work out of doors. So windy & cold & wet.’ But she noted the artist colony’s advantages too, particularly the ‘kindest old Vrouw’, the ‘good’ and comparatively cheaper models, and ‘plenty of good interiors where you can find shelter on stormy days.’²⁵ In fact, one of Hodgkins’ paintings in Te Papa’s collection, “A Dutch Girl” (Fig. 8), dates approximately to this time and, like “Wilhelmina” and “A Dutch Housewife”, depicts a local female subject. A young woman, almost fully frontal to the picture plane, is captured with heavy eyelids, looking downwards in a moment of contemplation, much like the repose depicted in Richmond’s “Wilhelmina”. Here, Hodgkins diverges from the composition shared by “Susannah”, “Wilhelmina” and “A Dutch Housewife”: her half-length figure is positioned frontally, more a portrait of the woman than a scene of everyday life. Yet, gracing her temples, we find a pair of “krullen”, identifying the figure as a local South Holland model. One wonders whether, during the painting process, Hodgkins thought of the summer she spent in Rijsoord with ‘Miss Richmond’ and, in her mind’s eye, saw Richmond’s painting of “Wilhelmina”.

Figure 8. 

Frances Hodgkins, “A Dutch Girl”, c.1907, watercolour on paper, 331 × 230 mm. Te Papa, 1936-0012-50, gift of the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts, 1936.