William Hodges
William Hodges (born October 28, 1744 in London , † June 6, 1797 in Brixham , Devon ) was an English painter.
Hodges accompanied Captain James Cook on board the Resolution on his second voyage to the South Seas. a. to Tahiti , the Tonga Islands, New Zealand, Easter Island and Antarctica .
Life
Born as the only son of a blacksmith and initially working as a delivery boy, he learned painting skills through his teacher William Shipley. His second teacher, Richard Wilson, employed him as his assistant in the mid-1760s, after which Hodges initially hired himself a. a. as a theater painter in Derby before he - v. a. known for landscape painting - was selected for participation in the second great expedition of James Cook (1772–1775) carried out by the Royal Society.
During his stay on board, Hodges v. a. Landscape sketches, but also some portraits of expedition participants and special personalities of the islands visited. His landscape paintings usually also contain elements that show the way of life of the people he visits. His sketches were worked on after his return to London, Hodges got a job with the Admiralty for some time, which allowed him to make oil paintings from the sketches and to supervise the production of engravings. Hodges' pictures illustrate, in large numbers, the travelogues of James Cook that appeared later.
As a primarily landscape painter, the ethnographic accuracy of his pictures is sometimes problematic. From his depiction of the ships Resolution and Adventure on Matavai Bay, Tahiti, it is known that an early sketch, contrary to the well-known oil painting, depicted a mighty war canoe of the inhabitants. This detail can no longer be found on the painting; Hodges made a compositional change here in order to correspond to the images of the South Seas as a peaceful place that were common at the time. Hodges' pictures also show classicist depictions of the islanders, which imply inaccurate parallels to antiquity that were not found in this way. Georg Forster wrote about Hodges' illustration of the Tonga islanders in his travelogues in 1777:
“Mr. Hodges drew a fine painting of this strange, friendly reception, which was engraved on Cook's news of this trip. But, no matter how inclined I am to give the works of this ingenious artist the praise they deserve, if they are completely true to the truth, I cannot but take this opportunity to notice that the people on Ea - Uhwe (Eua; author's note) and Tongatabu do not give a correct term. (...) Connoisseurs will find Greek contours and formations in this plate, such as never existed in the South Seas; and they admire a beautiful flowing robe that covers the head and body, since in this island women almost never cover their shoulders and breasts. The figure of a venerable old man with a long white beard is splendid; but the people of Ea-Uhwe do not let the beard grow, but rather know how to shave it briefly with mussel shells ... "
After his return to England and the subsequent work on the publication of Cook's travelogues, Hodges married in 1776, but his wife died a little later. In 1779, Hodges left his homeland to be the first professional painter to visit India. He stayed in India for six years, a. a. 1783 in Lucknow , and later toured the European continent, so u. a. St. Petersburg in 1790. Hodges' second marriage to Lydia Wright in 1784 occurred during this period, but she too died shortly after the marriage. Between 1786 and 1794 he repeatedly exhibited his paintings as a member of the Royal Academy, including landscapes from India.
In the late 1790s, Hodges invested his fortune in a bank in Dartmouth, which went bankrupt in March 1797. Impoverished and in poor health, Hodges died on March 6, 1797, a suicide suspected of being an overdose of laudanum. His third wife, whom he married in 1785, only survived a few months.
He has been the namesake of Hodges Knoll , a hill in Ellsworthland in Antarctica, since 2014 .
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| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Hodges, William |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | English painter |
| DATE OF BIRTH | October 28, 1744 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | London |
| DATE OF DEATH | June 6, 1797 |
| Place of death | Brixham |