Brooklyn-Grace Folesi recently finished an internship at Te Papa, as part of her Art History honours year. During the internship, she catalogued a recent acquisition of work by Czech artist Gertrud Kauders (1883–1942). Here, Brooklyn reflects on Kauders’ artistic practice, considering the connections between her life and work, and that of Frances Hodgkins (1869–1947), a New Zealand contemporary.
In the realm of early-20th-century modern art, two very different stories emerge: one of a New Zealand-born painter who made her career in Europe, and one of a Prague-born Jewish woman whose work and life were caught in the traumas of the Holocaust.
Although they moved in quite distinct circles and circumstances, Frances Hodgkins and Gertrud Kauders invite comparison through their commitment to artistic practice, through the challenges of gender in their times, and through the ways in which their legacies have been shaped (and in the case of Kauders, recovered).
In comparing them, we can probe questions such as: What happens when artists move away from their home country or cultural context? How does gender affect recognition? How do historical events (war, migration, genocide) shape an artistic legacy? And how does a museum like Te Papa position itself in a global art-history network while being rooted in Aotearoa?
Frances Hodgkins
Born in Dunedin, New Zealand in 1869, Frances Hodgkins grew up in a city that already had a vigorous art community, in part thanks to her father, W. M. Hodgkins.
She studied locally, then travelled to London and Europe, and eventually settled in Britain in the 1930s. Her art, in particular her later work, is noted for its modernist tendencies: simplified forms, strong attention to colour relationships, and a willingness to blur genre boundaries (still life, landscape, portraiture).
During the later decades of her career, she was an important figure in the British contemporary art world and exhibited with younger artists, including through the Seven & Five Society.
Gertrud Kauders
Gertrud Kauders was born in Prague on 26 April 1883 into a wealthy German-speaking Jewish family. She studied at the Damenakademie in Munich under Max Feldbauer, then in Paris, where she was influenced by Post-Impressionism, before returning to Prague to complete her training.
Kauders exhibited actively in the 1920s and 1930s: in Berlin, Prague, and at the Prague Secession exhibitions. Critics singled out her work – for example, one note said her water-colours were “the most successful thing in the whole exhibition.”
On the 12th of May 1942, Kauders was transported first on Transport Au 671 from Prague to Terezin and then on the 17th of May she was put on transport Ay 859 to Lublin. At Lublin, a selection took place, and those fit to work were separated from those not. The latter were sent to the extermination camp Sobibor, where they were murdered on or soon after arrival.[1] While Sobibor’s records no longer exist, Kauders’ family and researchers are fairly certain she was murdered there.
What makes Kauders’ story especially poignant is the recent rediscovery of her hidden artworks: around 700 works were found in the walls and ceilings of a Prague house in 2018. Among these, a number of oil and watercolour paintings have been donated to institutions, including Te Papa.
Kauders’ nephew immigrated to New Zealand during the war, changing his name from Cornelius Kauders to Peter During. He had five children who are Kauders’ only direct descendants, and who went on to inherit her works after their discovery in 2018.
Gender Recognition and Legacy
Frances Hodgkins cultivated intimate relationships with women such as Dorothy Kate Richmond, Jane Saunders, and Hannah Ritchie – connections that were emotionally rich and, in some cases, suggestive of romantic partnership.
Though Hodgkins never publicly declared a queer identity, her life was shaped by a network of LGBTQI+ friends, and her art – particularly her self-portraits – often reflected a coded femininity and elusiveness that resisted heteronormative framing. Her final years were marked by care and companionship from lesbian friends, and her funeral was attended largely by queer mourners.[2]
While Gertrud Kauders is less extensively documented in this regard, her life and work likewise pushed against conventional gender roles and social expectations. Like Hodgkins, Kauders never married.
Though there is no direct evidence to suggest she identified as queer, aspects of her artistic practice and the progressive cultural circles she moved in reveal a sensibility that resonates with Hodgkins’ own: one marked by ambiguity, autonomy, and a subtle resistance to prescribed norms.
Considered together, their legacies encourage a broader, more expansive understanding of queer modernity – one grounded not solely in labels, but in lived experience, artistic intention, and alternative ways of imagining the self in the world.
Artworks in Conversation
This comparison places works by Frances Hodgkins and Gertrud Kauders side by side to examine how each artist uses self-portraiture and still life to explore identity and artistic presence. The aim of looking at Hodgkins’ Still life: Self portrait alongside Kauders’ Self portrait is to show how both artists stretch traditional genres in different ways.
Still life: Self-portrait, by Frances Hodgkins, is unconventional: Hodgkins doesn’t depict herself in a realistic, figurative way. Instead, the composition interweaves still-life elements – flowers, a scarf, a beret and a handbag on a table – with more abstract forms. The brushwork is fluid and expressive, and the colours are somewhat bold but delicate, creating a contemplative, intimate atmosphere.
The ‘self’ of Hodgkins is embedded in the objects and shapes rather than rendered directly as a face.
In contrast, the second work, Self portrait by Gertrud Kauders, is much more direct and linear in its representation. The medium of ink on paper gives the drawing a sharpness and clarity – there are strong lines and a precise rendering of facial features.
The composition centres firmly on her face. Here, Kauders presents herself quite literally: the portrait is a straightforward, figurative depiction of her own likeness, capturing her identity in a more traditional, representational way.
Although both works are self portraits, they express markedly different approaches to depicting the self. Hodgkins’ Still life: Self portrait uses oil on panel to create a richly textured, semi-abstract composition in which her identity is suggested through still-life motifs and expressive brushwork, resulting in a poetic questioning of self-portraiture.
Hodgkins’ painting is not trying to create a physical likeness, but instead draws together objects that clothe her, exploring the different ways that she is embodied and presented to the world. Kauders’ Self portrait, by contrast, is rendered in ink on paper with sharp and clear lines that give the image clarity and directness, presenting her face in a straightforward, figurative manner.
Both Hodgkins and Kauders offer a symbolic reflection on their inner world, while maintaining an assertive representation of their outward appearances.
Placed in conversation, these two still life paintings reveal different temperaments and artistic priorities, yet share a sensitivity to the quiet dramas of domestic space. Kauders’ still life offers a delicately observed arrangement with potted hyacinths, a patterned cloth, and a tea cup.
It leans toward intimacy and atmosphere. Its palette is soft, muted, and slightly cool; washes of colour blur gently into one another, giving the scene a sense of immediacy, as though she were painting from close observation in a private interior. The details feel tenderly handled: the droop of the flowers, the frayed edges of the tablecloth, the shimmer on the ceramic dish.
The overall effect is one of quiet presence – a still life that feels lived-in, touched by everyday rhythms and attentive looking.
Hodgkin’s still life, by contrast, is more structurally assertive and rhythmically arranged. Here, the objects – a jug, a bowl of eggs, apples on a plate, budding branches – are outlined with firmer, more decisive lines, giving the composition a graphic clarity. The warm, earthen palette and the use of simplified forms create a sense of solidity and expressive weight.
Whereas Kauders’ still life dissolves gently into its environment, this one feels composed, almost theatrical: each object is granted its own sculptural presence, and the interplay of curves (the jug’s handle, the shells, the bowl) creates a looping movement across the surface. There is a greater sense of intentional arrangement.
Together, the two works show different possibilities within modernist still life. Kauders’ painting leans toward atmospheric impression – the fleeting qualities of colour, pattern, and light. Hodgkin’s still life embraces structure, contour, and the expressive potential of everyday forms.
When viewed side by side, they reveal how artists used the still life genre not simply to record objects but to explore mood, texture, and to situate themselves in relation to contemporary art artistic practice.
Institutional Presence
The institutional presence of both artists further highlights the divergent trajectories of their legacies. Frances Hodgkins, whose career flourished during her lifetime, is represented in major collections internationally and throughout New Zealand, including Te Papa.
Her standing is reflected not only in the breadth of her institutional representation but also in the ongoing recognition of her contributions, such as a fellowship named in her honour.
Gertrud Kauders, by contrast, remained largely unknown after her death. The chance 2018 discovery of the works she had hidden before her deportation radically altered her legacy, bringing her art into public view for the first time in decades.
The acquisition of 18 works on paper by Te Papa, alongside the redistribution of her work to significant international institutions, marks the re-emergence of her place in art history.
Bringing Hodgkins and Kauders together offers a way to think about modernism not as a single, unified movement, but as a set of parallel experiences shaped by vastly different personal and political circumstances. For a museum that engages with both local and global histories, the juxtaposition of these artists opens up a richer, more complex story.
Hodgkins, a New Zealand-born painter who achieved international prominence, embodies the outward movement of New Zealand artists participating in global modernist networks. Kauders, although not connected to New Zealand during her lifetime, enters the museum’s collection through the survival of her hidden works – objects that carry with them histories of displacement, persecution, and rediscovery.
Collecting her work allows Te Papa to address broader themes such as migration, resilience, the fragility of artistic legacies, and the ways in which museums can recover and restore voices lost to history.
In this way, the pairing of Hodgkins and Kauders does more than compare two women modernists: it demonstrates how institutional collecting can illuminate the intersections of personal experience and historical force, and how museums can serve as spaces where disparate artistic journeys are brought into dialogue.
Closing Thoughts
While Frances Hodgkins and Gertrud Kauders did not work in the same circles or under the same conditions, placing them side by side enriches our understanding of the diversity of early-20th-century modern art.
Hodgkins’ career offers insight into a New Zealander abroad actively shaping and being shaped by British and European modernism; her evolving approach to colour, form and composition reflects an artist deeply engaged with the avant-garde currents of her time.
Kauders, too, was an artist attuned to the shifting languages of modernism. Her works on paper reveal distinctive modernist sensibilities that resonate with European artistic developments of the interwar period.
When viewed together, their works demonstrate parallel yet very different pathways into modernist experimentation.
Kauders’ story inevitably reminds us of the silence and rupture imposed by history, but her artistic presence is not defined solely by that loss.
Her works testify to a committed and thoughtful practice that deserves recognition in its own right: images shaped by the environment of Prague, by the cross-currents of Expressionism and New Objectivity, and by her own sensitivity to human character and emotional nuance. Her rediscovered works invite us to appreciate not just what was interrupted, but what was achieved.
Both artists invite reflection – on colour and gesture, on survival, on memory and legacy. Brought into dialogue, Hodgkins and Kauders show that the modernist impulse traversed national boundaries, languages, and lives, and that the richness of modern art lies not in a single dominant narrative but in the many voices – celebrated, marginalised, interrupted, or rediscovered – that together form its history.
[1]‘Gertruda Kaudersová’, Institutu Terezínské iniciativy https://www.holocaust.cz/en/database-of-victims/victim/97881-gertruda-kaudersova/
[2] Drayton, Joanne. “Frances Hodgkins: A portrait of queer love.” Te Papa Blog, Frances Hodgkins: A portrait of queer love