oil on Belgian linen

Artwork date: 1998/9
Signature details: signed, dated and inscribed with the title on the reverse

(1)

122.5 x 92 cm; framed size: 133 x 103 x 4.5 cm

PROVENANCE:

Private collection, Cape Town.

Acquired directly from the artist.

ABOUT THE ARTWORK:

In William Shakespeare’s dramatic play Hamlet, Polonius described his daughter Ophelia as a “green girl” when she revealed her feelings for the young Prince Hamlet of Denmark. A ‘green girl’ is seen as young, innocent, not fully formed and still coming of age. Inexperienced in the ways of love, she forges ahead, clumsy and naïve in the precarious process of becoming herself. In Shakespeare’s story, Ophelia is the embodiment of these characteristics. Towards the end, due to Hamlet’s actions and the death of her father, Ophelia crumbled into a state of grief and insanity that ultimately led to her drowning. The tragic tale of Ophelia captured the imagination of many Victorian painters, the most famous depictions being those by Pre Pre-Raphaelite English artist Sir John Everett Millais.

1. John William Waterhouse, Ophelia, 1851/2. Collection: Tate Britain, London.
2. John William Waterhouse, Ophelia, 1894. Collection: The Schaffer Collection.

Extremely erudite and widely read, Robert Hodgins often drew on literary, mythological, historical and art-historical references to create visual narratives in his work that reflect, in his view, various current social realities. Throughout his career, he continuously referenced a variety of subjects and experimented with mediums and techniques, challenging himself to find new and innovative ways to portray reality through metaphor.

This exquisite large-scale painting can be viewed as Hodgins’ own contemporary re-imagining of Ophelia. Intellectual and emotional in its origin, the work is an intriguing, expressive physiological portrait of individual identity – the Ophelia legend serving perhaps as an allegory or critique of the human condition.

Hodgins was a keen social observer and referred to people as ‘visual facts’. Primarily a figurative painter, he was keenly interested in visually describing human subjects on his canvasses. A Green Girl is a remarkably compelling work and stands out in Hodgins’ oeuvre since it is one of only a very few paintings in which a female figure features solely. Here the composition is that of classical portraiture and the interplay between figuration, abstraction and the human form is expertly achieved, while Hodgins’ mastery of vivid colours and painterly texture sensitively negotiate the terrain between seriousness and playfulness.

The figure is rendered in a splendid emerald green Victorian-style dress. The specificity of the portrait is subverted by the abstracted head, its multiple geometrical shapes squaring off a range of emotional features – while a mirror image appears in the right view. The background is indistinct, yet may reference the brook from the classic tale. Perhaps still naïve and fractured in her innocence and sorrow, this ‘green girl’ displays a stoic dignity – a hidden, forceful character, previously overlooked by others, but ingeniously captured by Hodgins.

Text by Marelize van Zyl

COLLECTOR'S NOTE

In 1999, the same year Robert Hodgins completed the painting, he formed part of the exhibition REWIND: FAST FORWARD at the Van Reekum Museum of Modern Art in Appeldoorn, Netherlands.