Gallery Notes

PREVIEW: These are the words used by David Attenborough in his ‘Foreword’ to the National Maritime Museum’s exhibition on Hodges in thesummer of 2004, thefirstever of its kind. Three years earlier I had discovered a rare, lost painting by him from the Cook voyage and sold it to the Captain Cook Memorial Museum in the town of his birth, Whitby, in North Yorkshire. Not least because of this, our firm was closely involved with the 2004 exhibition, both through financial support and by being granted the uncommon privilege of displaying in our own Bond Street gallery a preview of a selection of highlights from theshow to be held at Greenwich thefollowing month. Being ableto study and appreciate Hodges’extraordinary oil paintings of New Zealand, Polynesia and Easter Island in the privacy of one’s own premises was an unforgettable experience. It was also memorable for giving me the chance to discuss his work David Attenborough. He came in one day, unannounced and on his own, to study the pictures in advance of his official opening of the Greenwich exhibition a fortnight later. We both agreed that William Hodges was a remarkably deft and adaptable artist, and that, for such an openminded and curious man, his life’s experience must have been almost unimaginable...