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William Hodges

Born: London, 28 October 1744
Died: Brixham, Devon, 6 March 1797
Nationality: English
Studies: 

William Shipley’s Academy (London); apprenticed to landscape painter Richard Wilson (1758-65)

Career: 

1765 – joins Incorporated Society of Artists and begins exhibiting there regularly

1772-75 –official artist on Captain James Cook’s second voyage to the South Pacific, records scenes from Antarctica, New Zealand, and the Pacific islands

1775 –British Admiralty hires him to paint works based on Cook voyage sketches and oversee the production of engravings for Cook’s A Voyage towards the South Pole (1777)

1776 –begins exhibiting at the Royal Academy (RA)

1785 – Select Views in India (1785-88) published with 48 aquatints of Hodges’s drawings

1786 – elected to RA

1793 – Hodges’s Travels in India during the Years 1780, 1781, 1782, 1783 is published

1795 – privately exhibits two landscapes, Effects of Peace and Consequences of War (both untraced), which are censored by Prince George (later King George IV) for their critical political overtones; Hodges retires

Travels 

Switzerland and Germany (1771); New Zealand, Antarctica, Pacific islands (1772-75); India (1779-83); Russia (1792)

Commissions from: 

British Government; Warren Hastings, Governor General of Bengal

Important Artworks: 

Mrs. Hastings near the Rocks of Colgong, 1790 (Yale Center for British Art, New Haven)