Postcards from the South Seas

If you consult The Yale Dictionary of Art & Artists on the subject of William Hodges, the brief entry will inform you that he was a British landscape painter, pupil of Richard Wilson ‘and his most accomplished imitator’, and that not finding success in London he joined Captain Cook’s second voyage to the South Pacific as official landscape artist. That was in 1772–5. From 1780 to 1784 he was in India, and in 1790 he visited Russia. ‘Hodges’, we are told, ‘skilfully adapted Wilson’s technique and rules of composition to exotic material, while maintaining an air of documentary fidelity.’ I am a seasoned admirer of Yale’s Dictionary, expertly compiled by Erika Langmuir and Norbert Lynton, but this entry is too bald. Hodges has been underrated, largely because his work has not been sufficiently seen. A new exhibition — which travels next year to the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven — should help to remedy this.