Weaver Hawkins
Weaver Hawkins
Boat Party, c. 1922
Weaver Hawkins (1893-1977)
etching ed. 1/20
12 x 17 cm (plate) frame 34.5 × 38 cm
signed and editioned below plate, titled (obscured)
$700
enquire:
simon@ensemblefineart.com.au
0419 540 162
Harold Frederick Weaver Hawkins (aka Raokin) was born in London. From 1906-10 he attended Dulwich College where he won the art prize every year. He then proceeded to Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts. His student friends included painters David Jones and Frank Medworth. The three, enlisted for military service in the First World War; Weaver Hawkins Queen’s Westminster Rifles, David Jones, Royal Welsh Fusiliers and Frank Medworth, East Surrey Regiment.
Hawkins was severely injured at the Somme in France in July 1916 and lost the function of his right hand. He retrained himself to paint with his left hand, which had also been damaged. After the war he, with his friends David Jones and Frank Medworth studied at the Westminster School of Art from 1919 to 1922. Weaver took classes in etching from Sir Frank Short.
In 1923, he married artist Irene (Rene) Eleanor Villiers and in April had his first solo exhibition Morocco & England, etchings and watercolours at Elliot & Fry’s Galleries, 63 Baker St. London. From 1923 until 1935 Hawkins and his wife and three children travelled widely, spending time between England, Spain, France, Malta, Tahiti and New Zealand, before arriving in Sydney, Australia in 1935.
Between 1941 and 1972 (when he ceased to paint) he exhibited widely, especially with the Contemporary Art Society of Australia (State president 1952, 1954-63) and the Sydney Printmakers. Hawkins entered works for the Archibald, Sulman and Wynne prizes, and for the Blake prize for religious art, though he was an agnostic. Solo exhibitions were held at the Macquarie Galleries and elsewhere in 1946-68. In 1953 he was awarded Queen Elizabeth II's coronation medal. His work entered a few public collections and won minor prizes from 1950, but not until a 1976 retrospective exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales did he begin to be assessed as a major artist. A monograph of his work, The Art and Life of Weaver Hawkins by E. Chanin and S. Miller was published in 1995. He is now considered one of the finest and most original mid-century painters working in Sydney. Works by Hawkins are now held by the National Gallery of Australia (176) Art Gallery of NSW (74) Art Gallery of South Australia, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Geelong Gallery, Heide Museum of Modern Art, National Gallery of Victoria, and University of Melbourne.