Lumber Raft on the Ottawa, 1886 by Frances Anne Hopkins





Frances Anne Hopkins
Lumber Raft on the Ottawa, 1886
watercolour
signed with initials and dated 1886 lower right
15.5 x 22.5 in ( 39.4 x 57.2 cm ) ( sight )
Auction Estimate: $30,000.00 - $50,000.00
Price Realized $48,000.00
Sale date: May 28th 2025
Private Collection
Sotheby's Canada, auction, Toronto, 14-15 May 1973, lot 53
John Rogers, Toronto
By descent to the present Private Collection
Janet E. Clarke, "Frances Anne Hopkins 1838-1919: Canadian Scenery", Thunder Bay, 1990, see page 77 for a similar work in the collection of the Royal Ontario Museum
Thomas Schultze, "Frances Anne Hopkins, Images from Canada", Manotick, 2008, see pages 59-61 for similar works in the collection of Library and Archives Canada and the Royal Ontario Museum
The work of Frances Anne Hopkins was the subject of the major exhibition "Frances Anne Hopkins, 1838–1919: Canadian Scenery", organized by the Thunder Bay Art Gallery in 1990. More recently, the life of Hopkins has been the subject of several articles and essays, as well as two full-length studies, Thomas Schultze’s "Frances Anne Hopkins, Images from Canada" (2008) and Mary-Ellen Weller-Smith’s recent biography "Frances Anne Hopkins: Hudson’s Bay Company Wife, Voyageurs’ Artist" (2022).
We extend our thanks to Jim Burant, art historian and curator, for contributing the preceding essay.
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Frances Anne Hopkins
(1838 - 1919)
Born in England, she married Edward Martin Hopkins, a world traveller, in 1858. They travelled to Canada where her husband had a responsible position with the Hudson’s Bay Company. He was required to travel often and she accompanied him on his journeys. Frances Hopkins painted many genre scenes but also a remarkable series of paintings of voyageurs. Many of them were believed done during her trip with the Red River expedition of 1870 headed by Col. G.J. Wolseley. She sketched in oils and watercolours and her Canadian sketch books became the property of the Public Archives of Canada as did her exceptionally fine and detailed Canadian canvases. Most of her work was untitled but she did sign them with her initials F.A.H.
On the Red River expedition she was the only woman. Grave Lee Nute in her well documented and well illustrated article on the artist for ‘The Beaver’ described one of her paintings as follows, “One very appealing picture, which has been reproduced many times, shows a typical bark canoe, beautifully decorated in bow and stern, manned by eight voyageurs, passing the foot of a great shoulder of rock, down which runs a rill in successive waterfalls. A few spruces or balsams can be seen glimpsed above the rock. White water-lilies are attracting the attention of Mrs. Hopkins, for whom a voyageur is picking lilies, while Hopkins looks on, smoking his pipe. The whole conception of the picture is faithful to reality, yet most artistic. Even the reflection of the canoe and its occupants in the clear water of some northern lake is perfection itself.”
The Hopkins returned to England on his retirement sometime after 1870. They lived in London and later at Oxfordshire. Her husband died in 1894 and she died in London in 1918.
Source: "A Dictionary of Canadian Artists, Volume II”, compiled by Colin S. MacDonald, Canadian Paperbacks Publishing Ltd, Ottawa, 1979