Frances Hodgkins Palette 2

Palette Analysis

The high-key values of Frances Hodgkins give it an effulgent, almost bleached quality. Blues and teal-greys govern the palette, lending it an aquatic or atmospheric quality. Chroma is kept low across all colours, producing the soft, enveloping quality that characterises tonal painting. #EBE3D8 at 51.6% of the palette: an overwhelming presence that pulls all other colours into its gravitational field. Only 3.0% is devoted to #407997, yet that small allocation delivers the palette's entire chromatic tension. At 43 units across the value scale, the palette keeps contrast readable without letting it dominate. The palette has the character of outdoor light: cool, mid-bright, with colour rendered faithfully rather than expressively. This is palette 2 of Frances Hodgkins's sequence - a single chapter in a chromatic story told across many works.