Frances Anne Hopkins: Images from Canada
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by Thomas Schultze
Penumbra Press, Manotick, Ontario, 2008
120 pp., illus., $55 hardcover
This slim volume of drawings and paintings provides a delightful glimpse into artist Frances Anne Hopkins’ life as well as the time and place in which she lived. Little is known about her early years, but we are told that she was only twenty when she married thirty-eight-year-old Edward Martin Hopkins in London, England, in 1858.
Her husband was a senior official with the Hudson’s Bay Company. She moved with him and three young stepchildren to start a new life in Canada, and by the age of twenty-five they had three more children. Left to cope on her own for long periods, Hopkins spent much of her time documenting her surroundings.
As her family grew older, Hopkins and her husband were able to take long canoe trips aided by guides and other employees. Her surviving work consists of delicate line drawings –– including both rough sketches and detailed, polished works –– along with pale, pristine watercolours and dark, moody oil paintings. Together, they record a passing age.
The book is not meant to be a definitive biography. Rather, it lets Hopkins’ pictures speak for themselves.
— Beverley Tallon (Read bio)
Beverley Tallon is a freelance writer and the former Assistant Editor for Canada's History.