of starting a public art gallery. That did not happen but in 1875 he founded what soon became the Otago Art Society. Although there was resistance to his plans to start an art gallery under his presidency in 1881 the society started to collect pictures. In 1882 its council agreed to start a 'national collection of works of art'. A resolution of 14 October 1884 effectively founded the Dunedin Public Art Gallery the first institution of its kind in New Zealand. Hodgkins's career as a lawyer went into decline. In 1884 he moved his family from a house in Royal Terrace, a good address in the city, to a rented cottage at Ravensbourne, a harbourside suburb. In 1888 he was declared bankrupt. Hodgkins struggled out of these difficulties, eventually moving the family back to a large rented house in town. He was involved in organising the art department of the New Zealand and South Seas Exhibition held in Dunedin in 1889. In the same year he proposed the idea of a government-funded national gallery with collections in each of the four main centres. While that did not happen, the collection of the Dunedin gallery was augmented from the exhibition, a new building erected, and a support group was founded: the Dunedin Public Art Gallery Society. Hodgkins' own art had developed considerably. An accomplished landscape painter in the Romantic manner of Turner the most notable characteristic of his work is its use of colour. New styles were brought to New Zealand in 1890 by G. P. Nerli, Petrus Van der Velden and J. M. Nairn. Hodgkins embraced the newcomers and with Nerli in Dunedin the resulting twin circles of painters made the city for a while the foremost centre of art in New Zealand. Hodgkins died in Dunedin on 9 February 1898, survived by his wife, two daughters and four sons. He left his family poor but they and the community remembered a cheerful, persevering, ambitious man. The society and the public gallery he had founded endured and prospered. He had published the first considered statement of any length on New Zealand art and he left behind a body of works the best of which are among the best of their kind in New Zealand. The Southern Alps of New Zealand.. of 1885 is often mentioned; The South Canterbury Plains from near Peel Forest of 1882 is remarkable for its breadth