posted on 2023-06-08, 06:09authored byGeoffrey Quilley
Hodges arrived in India in January 1780. Joseph Farington suggested that he turned to India partly out of grief at the early death of his first wife. But his decision also demonstrated a combination of two of the primary characteristics of his artistic career: an oppurtunism, based on calculated risk to exploit the artistic and professional openings created by developing imperial expansion, together with an increasing artistic interest in the representation of history through landscape painting. The complexities involved in such an artistic project were indicated in paintings of Pacific subjects done for the Admiralty after Cook's voyage, and more particularly in his depictions of historic British buildings and locations made during 1777 and 1778 (cat. no. 73).