Eliot Hodgkin

Eliot Hodgkin (19 June 1905 – 30 May 1987) was an English painter, best known for his highly detailed still lifes executed either in tempera or oil.

Early life

Curwen Eliot Hodgkin was born at Purley Lodge, Purley-on-Thames, near Pangbourne, Berkshire on 19 June 1905, the only son of Alice Jane (née Brooke) and Charles Ernest Hodgkin. Hodgkin began with oil painting in the late 1920s and in 1937 he started painting in tempera.

Career By the middle of the 1930s Hodgkin had established himself as a painter of still lifes, landscapes and murals, exhibiting regularly at the Royal Academy. His first one-man exhibition was in London at Picture Hire Ltd. in 1936. Shortly afterwards he began working in egg tempera.

During World War II Hodgkin was working in the Home Intelligence Division of the Ministry of Information, and proposed making some drawings of plants growing in London's bomb sites. Some originals were seen in March 1945, and as a result, he was offered a 35-guinea commission as part of the War Artists Scheme. Two pictures were delivered in July, and one was accepted.

In 1959 he turned down the opportunity of becoming an Academician, but continued to exhibit at the Royal Academy throughout his career, exhibiting a total of 113 paintings at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibitions between 1934 and 1981.

In 1979 Hodgkin stopped painting because of worsening eyesight.

Interest and style Eliot Hodgkin provided a brief description of his interest in still life painting in 1957, in response to an enquiry from the editors of The Studio: "In so far as I have any conscious purpose, it is to show the beauty of natural objects which are normally thought uninteresting or even unattractive: such things as Brussels sprouts, turnips, onions, pebbles and flints, bulbs, dead leaves, bleached vertebrae, an old boot cast up by the tide. People sometimes tell me that they had never really ‘seen’ something before I painted it, and I should like to believe this... For myself, if I must put it into words, I try to look at quite simple things as though I were seeing them for the first time and as though no one had ever painted them before."

In a letter written to Sir Brinsley Ford, Hodgkin wrote: "I like to show the beauty of things that no one looks at twice."

Personal life On 24 April 1940, Hodgkin married Maria Clara (Mimi) Henderson (née Franceschi), his lifetime partner. In April 1941 they had their only son, Max.

Death and legacy Eliot died on 30 May 1987 at the age of 81 and his ashes are buried at St John's Notting Hill.