Dr Pamela Gerrish Nunn: Frances Hodgkins and Portraiture

For the first of three sessions focused on the work of Frances Hodgkins, lecturer, curator and researcher Pamela Gerrish Nunn discusses Hodgkins’ relationship to portraiture. Nunn's career as an art historian began in the UK in 1976. She came to New Zealand in 1989 to teach at the University of Canterbury, becoming professor of Art History and Theory in 2007. She now works in the Wellington region as an independent researcher and curator.

Dr Pamela Gerrish Nunn's career as an art historian began in the city of Bristol in the UK in 1976. Her publications soon made her a recognised specialist in the field of women artists, with particular reference to British art of the 19th century. Her books in this area include "Canvassing" (1986), "Victorian Women Artists" (1987) and "Problem Pictures" (1996). She was also instrumental in the exhibition of Victorian women artists' works, notably "The Women's Art Show" (1982), "Pre-Raphaelite Women Artists" (1997, with Jan Marsh) and "From Victorian to Modern" (2006). She has written chapters in several books on 19th-century art such as Campbell-Orr ed "Women in the Victorian Art World" (1995), Hewison ed "Ruskin's Artists" (2000), Elliott and Helland eds "Women Artists and the Decorative Arts" (2002), Chapman and Stabler eds "Unfolding the South" (2003), Parkin ed "William Morris and the Art of Everyday Life" (2010), Balducci and Jensen eds "Women, Bourgeois Femininity and Public Space in Nineteenth-Century European Visual Culture" (2014), and has made numerous contributions to conferences over the years, in the UK, the USA, Cuba, France, Australia and New Zealand.

In Aotearoa New Zealand since 1989, she taught at the University of Canterbury for twenty years, leaving as professor of Art History and Theory in 2009. She now works in the Wellington region as an independent researcher and curator, and has two recent shows of Hodgkins' works to her credit, the New Zealand Portrait Gallery's exhibition "Frances Hodgkins People" (2017) and the Mahara Gallery's exhibition "Frances Hodgkins from Dunedin to Waikanae" (2019). She is currently writing a book about Frances Hodgkins in Cornwall.

Image: Frances Hodgkins, "Bridesmaids" (1930), Auckland Art Gallery