Everything about William Hodges totally explained
William Hodges (
October 28,
1744,
London -
March 6,
1797) was an
English painter. He was a member of
James Cook's second voyage to the
Pacific Ocean, and is best known for the sketches and paintings of locations he visited on that voyage, including
Table Bay,
Tahiti,
Easter Island, and the
Antarctic.
Hodges was a student of
William Shipley and
Richard Wilson. During his early career, he made a living by painting
theatrical scenery.
Hodges accompanied Cook to the Pacific as the expedition's artist in
1772-
1775. Many of his sketches and wash paintings were adapted as
engravings in the original published edition of Cook's journals from the voyage.
Most of the large-scale
landscape oil paintings from his Pacific travels for which Hodges is best known were also produced after his return to
London; he received a salary from the
Admiralty for the purposes of completing them. These paintings are especially notable as being some of the first landscapes to use
light and
shadow for dramatic purposes. Hodges' use of light as a compositional element in its own right was a marked departure from the classical landscape tradition. Contemporary art critics complained that his use of light and color contrasts gave his paintings a rough and unfinished appearance.
Hodges also produced many portrait sketches of Pacific Islanders and scenes from the voyage involving members of the expedition. However, his skills as a portrait artist were average, at best.
In
1778, Hodges travelled to
India, the first English professional landscape painter to visit that country. He remained there for 6 years, staying in Lucknow with
Claude Martin in 1783. Later in life he travelled on the Continent, including a visit to
St. Petersburg in
Russia in
1790.
In late
1794, Hodges opened an exhibition of his own works in London that included two large paintings called
The Effects of Peace and
The Effects of War. In late January,
1795, with Britain engaged in the
War of the First Coalition against
Revolutionary France and feelings running high, the exhibition was visited by
Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany, the second son of
King George III. The Duke took offense at the political nature of Hodges' paintings and ordered the exhibition closed; this Royal censure effectively ended Hodges' career as a painter.
Hodges retired to
Devon and became involved with a bank which failed during the banking crisis of March,
1797. On
March 6 of that year, he died from what was officially recorded as "gout in the stomach", but which was also rumored to be
suicide from an overdose of
laudanum.
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