Frances Anne Hopkins
| Frances Anne Hopkins | |
|---|---|
| Frances Anne Beechey | |
| Born | 1838-02-02 England |
| Died | 1919-03-05 Hampstead, London, England |
| Occupation | Painter |
| Father | |
| Mother | |
| Partner | |
Frances Anne Hopkins (2 February 1838 – 5 March 1919 (aged 81)), born Frances Anne Beechey, was an English-born painter best known for her vivid pictorial records of fur trade canoe travel on the Great Lakes during the 1860s, a period when that mode of transport was disappearing from the Hudson's Bay Company freight routes.
Early life
Frances Anne was born on 2 February 1838 in England into a family with deep artistic roots. Her grandfather was Sir William Beechey, a prominent portrait painter and member of the Royal Academy of Arts. Her grandmother worked as a miniaturist, and her father, Frederick William Beechey, a Royal Navy captain and hydrographer who eventually rose to the rank of rear-admiral, also had a facility for watercolour. Her mother was Charlotte Stapleton.[1]
Canadian years
On 31 August 1858, Frances Anne married Edward Martin Hopkins in London, a widower who served as secretary to Sir George Simpson, governor of the Hudson's Bay Company. The couple settled at Lachine, Lower Canada, near HBC headquarters. Edward Hopkins also brought three children from his previous marriage into the household. Frances Anne and Edward had five children together, two of whom died as infants during their Canadian years.[1]
After Sir George Simpson's death in 1860, Edward Hopkins managed the Montreal department. When the HBC relocated its office to Montreal in 1861, the family moved there as well, spending summers at Snowdon in Côte-des-Neiges. Frances Anne sketched the Lachine and Montreal areas from her earliest time in Canada, and her travels took her to Quebec, the Eastern Townships, Ottawa, Toronto, Niagara Falls, and New York.[1]
The most significant influence on her painting came from canoe expeditions she made along the Great Lakes, and on the Mattawa and Ottawa rivers in 1864, 1866, and 1869. A major canvas depicting a portage during Colonel Garnet Joseph Wolseley's 1870 Red River expedition suggests she may have made a fourth journey into the interior. These expeditions gave her an intimate knowledge of the voyageur canoe, allowing her to record canoe-handling skills with a precision that distinguished her work from the romantic conventions of the period. Her approach combined the topographical tradition with the picturesque character of the nineteenth-century English watercolour school, and she concentrated on the contemporary working life of the fur trade rather than its mythology.[1]
The family visited England and France during their Canadian years, with children often spending winters in London. Frances Anne showed work at the Art Association of Montreal exhibition in 1870, her only Canadian exhibition appearance during her lifetime. The family returned to England permanently in 1870, ending roughly a decade in Canada during which the HBC had transitioned from freight canoes to steamboats and railways — a transition her paintings preserve as a historical record.[1][2]
Career in England
After returning to England, the family settled first in central London, then at Henley-on-Thames. Frances Anne planned and submitted major oil paintings to the Royal Academy of Arts annual exhibitions beginning in 1869. Her voyageur compositions reached a wide audience through reproduction as illustrations in books and periodicals. Following Edward's death in 1893, she maintained a studio-home in Hampstead until her own death.[1]
In 1914 she held a solo watercolour exhibition in London featuring Canadian subjects, French landscapes, and scenes from South Africa. It was not until 1990 that a comprehensive retrospective of her work was mounted, at the Thunder Bay Art Gallery, which produced an exhibition catalogue pairing her paintings with Canadian scenery.[1][3]
Her paintings are held in numerous public collections, including the National Archives, Documentary Art and Photography Division; the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto; the Royal Ontario Museum (Canadiana Department); the Glenbow Museum in Calgary; the Art Gallery of Hamilton; the Art Gallery of Northumberland in Cobourg, Ontario; the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria; and the Minnesota Historical Society in St Paul.[1]
A notable literary connection runs through her husband's family: Gerard Manley Hopkins, the poet, was Edward Martin Hopkins's nephew.[1]
Death
Frances Anne Hopkins died on 5 March 1919 at Hampstead, London. Her death was reported in the Hampstead and Highgate Express on 8 and 12 March 1919.[4]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 Philip Shackleton."Philip Shackleton, "Frances Anne Beechey," Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 14."[website].Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 14 (University of Toronto/Université Laval).1998.University of Toronto/Université Laval.Link.(Rights: copyrighted | Access: open)
- ↑ "Art Association of Montreal, Sixth exhibition, 1870; catalogue of oil and water colour paintings, statuary, bronzes, and other works of art."[book].Art Association of Montreal.1870.Montreal.(Rights: unknown | Access: open)
- ↑ J. E. Clark and Robert Stacey."Frances Anne Hopkins, 1838–1919; Canadian scenery."[book].Thunder Bay Art Gallery exhibition catalogue.1990.Thunder Bay, Ontario.(Rights: unknown | Access: open)
- ↑ "Obituary notice."[newspaper].Hampstead and Highgate Express.1919-03-08.8, 12 March 1919.(Rights: unknown | Access: open)