YCBA Has Good Reason To Offer A Long-Overdue

Look At The Work Of William Hodges

By Shannon Hicks

NEW HAVEN — We are so flooded with instant news and images from around the world, cell phones that can transmit calls anywhere immediately, and even computers that allow us to talk with people in the furthest corners of the earth these days that it is hard to imagine a time when we did no know what the peoples and lands on the other side of the world even looked like.

The 18th Century British landscape painter William Hodges was instrumental in bringing views of faraway places to his homeland. He is perhaps best known for two major trips: First to Polynesia, Antarctica, New Zealand, and the South Pacific in 1772–1775 with the explorer Captain Cook (it was Cook’s second voyage of exploration to the South Pacific that Hodges traveled as the official landscape painter), and then in 1780 when he left for India. There he spent 3½ years traveling the country under the patronage of Warren Hastings, a key member of the East India Company and the first Governor-General of India.

Prior to the first voyage Hodges had just finished an apprenticeship under Richard Wilson, considered to be the leading British landscape painter of the day. Because of this, and of course his talent, Hodges also soon became one of the most important members of the younger generation of British painters.

Under Wilson’s guidance, Hodges was able to become an expert in of both types of landscapes that were most popular. There were the topographical portrayals, which were accurate records of the features of real places, and idea, or imaginary views, often used as the settings for classical and biblical subjects.

The two voyages, and the resulting works, have become the touchstones of Hodges’ career.

Through April 24, the Yale Center for British Art (YCBA) is offering a major exhibition, “William Hodges, 1744–1797: The Art of Exploration.” It is the only United States venue for the retrospective of works by Hodges, which had its initial showing last year at Queen’s House, National Maritime Museum (NMM) in London. It is also the first time the Cook expedition and the India works have been shown together, and the first time for many of the works to have been on public view since the artist’s lifetime.

The exhibition was organized by NMM. The exhibition curator was Dr Geoff Quilley, curator of marine art at NMM.

The exhibition features nearly 50 oils by Hodges from NMM, YCBA, and public and private lenders from the United States and Australia. YCBA’s in-house curator for “William Hodges” is Angus Trumble, the curator of paintings and sculpture.

“We’re so bombarded by images today that we can’t understand the impact of these works when they were first produced. People flocked to see these new views,” YCBA docent Joan Grossman said during an exhibition tour earlier this month. “These were unprecedented images. Britons had never before seen these lands in such detail.”

In his catalog essay “William Hodges, artist of empire,” Geoff Quilley points out that Hodges was “the first professional landscape artist (British or otherwise) to represent such extensive global territories so profusely and on such a scale.”

At sea for more than 170 weeks, Ms Grossman called the trip “rigorous” for all involved. But Hodges persevered. While his paintings became less spontaneous as the South Pacific journey continued, the works remain “fresh and spontaneous. He used his brush to capture what he was seeing,” said Ms Grossman. He also, exhibition literature points out, responded to the extraordinary range of subjects and weather conditions with dexterity.

“During the three-year journey they met with extremes of weather and environment,” from the heat and sun of the South Pacific to the freezing waters and iceberg mountains of the Antarctic, points out an exhibition pamphlet. “The works done on the voyage itself include a remarkable diversity of materials, from red chalk portraits, to pen and wash drawing, to plein-air oil studies. Hodges displays astonishing confidence across all media.”

Hodges also used his brush to infuse morality and/or fantasy into some of his works. “A View of Cape Stephens in Cook’s Straits [New Zealand] with waterspout 1776” offers both. Three waterspouts appear off the port side of Resolution, with perhaps a fourth forming, as the ship sails through very rough waters away from land. In the center foreground of the work are three figures representing, said Ms Grossman, the Holy Family. Finally, a large castle on a cliff to the ship’s starboard was, said Ms Grossman, “an embellishment of what was actually a very rudimentary fort on a hill.”

Hodges also tended to embellish the relationship between the men on Cook’s ships and those who were living in the areas to which the ship visited.

The 1776 oil on canvas “A View of Maitavie Bay in the Island of Otaheite [Tahiti]” does show the lush tropical richness, the foliages and even offers a sense of the heat of the area, but it also presents a harmonious relationship between natives and the arriving ships.

This brings up one of the longstanding issues with these paintings.

“This relates [to] a series of issues,” wrote Mr Quilley, “from the large question of Hodge’s role in representing the non-European world through the filter of a ‘European vision,’ to how he tempers and adapts his visions of the Pacific and India to suit the cultural and economic demands of the metropolitan audience for art.”

Hodges was being paid for his work during and well after both voyages; by the Admiralty while traveling with Cook and then by Warren Hastings (who then became the artist’s most important patron for the rest of his life) for the work in India. He was not about to create something the Admiralty did not want to show the rest of the world.

Also on view is “Pickersgill Harbour, Dusky Bay Sound, New Zealand,” done in April 1773. An X-ray of the painting revealed a second painting hidden underneath, which is believed to be the world’s earliest surviving depiction of Antarctica. If this is in fact the case, why did Hodges paint over his initial image?

“We don’t know why he did that,” Ms Grossman said, sounding as exasperated as the curators and researchers around the globe who have also tried to answer that question. “This unexplained decision is irritating and annoying.”

As the official draughtsman of Captain Cook’s voyage, the artist also spent so much time with the captain that his subsequent portrait of Cook was less like the typical portrait of the day and more like an intimate view of a friend.

“Hodges was interested in portraying what he saw, not addressing the accepted style,” said Ms Grossman. Hodges’s almost informal portrait of Cook shows a very intense, brooding man.

“[Cook] has a powerful expression and Hodges was not afraid to show that,” Ms Grossman added. “After traveling with Cook for a number of years, Hodges portrayed the captain the way he saw him.”

The second half of the exhibition, which focuses on the work done in India, is as important, magnificent in presentation, and somewhat taken with a grain of salt. These scenes depict a journey that was nearly the reverse of what the artist had experience while at sea. India was a land with a long, antique history, quite the opposite of the journey of discovery Hodges had shared with Cook.

Again, the paintings offer views of lands not yet seen by his countrymen with additional meaning.

“View of a Mosque at Rajmahal,” circa 1786–87, shows a mosque that was important to those living within its vicinity. The painting also, though not explained in its minimal title, showed a building in which British solders working for the East India Company took lodging, thereby making the building important to Britons.

In a documentary being screened during the run of the exhibition, the exhibition curator addresses the issue of Hodges, his work, and those who paid to have the work done.

“He was clearly aware of the importance, and even the political uses, of artists and their paintings,” said Mr Quilley.

Sadly, by the time of his death Hodges was nearing poverty. His reputation diminished quickly thereafter.

“Hodges’s significance lies, finally, in the consequent anomaly that after his death he was largely forgotten and was later effectively excised from the orthodox history of British art as it was academically articulated during the twentieth century,” Mr Quilley wrote in his catalog essay. “He was known, if at all, only as Cook’s artist or as one of the early British artists in India. Until now there has been no fully representative monographic exhibition devoted to him.”

YCBA organizers have said, in pamphlets and other exhibition-related handouts, that Hodges has been treated “as a secondary participant in the grand narratives of Captain Cook’s second voyage and the East India Company, and as an illustrator of the largest history of geographical exploration and the imperial project.

“This exhibition reclaims William Hodges as a fine and neglected master of historical landscape painting,” the notes continue.

“He was the most unjustly neglected painter of the century, and I don’t know why,” Mr Quilley says in the documentary. “It seems inconceivable that he’s been so overlooked.

“He was terribly talented,” he continued. “Those works were a core part of how the British colonies were understood in that day.”

In addition to the monumental Hodges exhibition, YCBA is concurrently presenting “Nobleness & Grandeur: Forging Historical Landscape in Britain, 1760–1850.” The secondary exhibition charts the development of the historical landscape in Britain from its creation during the mid 18th Century by Hodges’ mentor, Richard Wilson, to its culmination in the Romantic period.

“Nobleness & Grandeur” is on view until April 24. Using a selection of 52 pieces drawn from the museum’s own collections of paintings, prints, drawings and rare book, the exhibition includes works by Wilson (among them the landmark painting “Niobe”) and Hodges as well as contemporaries including John Constable, Thomas Gainsborough, John Martin, and J.M.W. Turner.

Finally, a large number of public programs has been planned around both exhibitions. Tours of “William Hodge” will be offered at 1 am on Saturdays, April 2 and 23, at noon; Thursdays, April 7 and 14, at 11 am; and Sunday, April 24, at 2 pm. Tours for “Nobleness and Grandeur” will be Sunday, April 3, at 2; Saturdays, April 9 and 16, at 2 pm; and Thursday, April 21, at 11 am.

Art in Context lectures, which begin at 12:30, and are 30-minute informal discussions of individual objects led by Yale faculty, staff, and visiting scholars, include the following: Tuesday, March 29, “The Phantom Continent: Hodges and One Painting that Isn’t”; and Tuesday, April 12, “Hodges in India.”

The documentary William Hodges: The Art of Exploration is being screened regularly in the museum’s lecture hall. Produced in 2004 by Illuminations Production in association with the National Maritime Museum, the 50-minute documentary focuses on the works Hodges painted while on his voyage with Captain Cook.

Screenings continue on Saturdays, March 26, April 2 and 16, at 10:30 am; and Thursdays, March 31, and April 7, 14, and 21.

Finally, a family program allows younger family members to “explore” the South Sea Islands and record their observations. Participants will tour the exhibition and then record their observations in dioramas and three-dimensional maps while experiencing the areas’ food and music.

The program, “Picture This! The Artist — YOU — As Explorer,” will be offered on Saturdays, March 26, and April 2, from 10:30 am until noon. It is intended for children ages 9 to 12; parents can register their children at 203-432-2858.

Yale Center for British Art is at 1080 Chapel Street in New Haven, at the corner of York Street. Call 203-432-2800 or visit www.yale.edu/ycba for additional information.