Frances Anne Hopkins - Untitled

  • Untitled
  • Watercolour on Paper
  • 14.75 x 21.5 in
  • 1870
  • Sold
  • Private Collection



Frances Anne Hopkins was an English painter. In 1858, she married Edward Hopkins, a Hudson's Bay Company official whose work took him to North America. Frances Anne’s earliest known sketches are of scenes from Lachine and around Montreal in the years immediately following her arrival in Lower Canada. She accompanied her husband and travelled extensively by large fur-trade canoes on the upper Great Lakes and the Mattawa (Ont.) and Ottawa rivers in 1864-1869. Her dated sketches leave a record of trips to Quebec, the Eastern Townships, Ottawa, Toronto, Niagara Falls, and New York. 

Her best-known works are several large paintings made from her sketches dipicting numerous Canadian subjects but her definitive style is the visually convincing record of the canoes and paddlers of the nation’s first great transportation system.

Hopkins returned to England in 1870 where she lived until her death. She was a member of the North British Academy of Arts. In 1988, a stamp was issued featuring one of her paintings and an inset sepia photograph of the artist.

Her work can be found in such collections as the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, Art Gallery of Hamilton, Art Gallery of Ontario and the Glenbow Museum.

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