Weaver Hawkins

Harold Frederick Weaver Hawkins (1893-1977) was an English painter who specialized in "ambitious, sometimes mural-sized, modernist allegories of morality for an age of atomic warfare and global over-population."^[1]

Personal life

Hawkins was born on August 28, 1893 in Sydenham, an area of London, England. He was the eldest of five sons of architect Edgar Augustine Hawkins and his wife Annie Elizabeth, née Weaver.^[2]

Harold attended Dulwich College from 1906 to 1910, and then Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts. World War I derailed his intention to become an art teacher.

He enlisted in the Queen's Westminster Rifles and was seriously wounded in the Battle of the Somme at Gommecourt, France in 1916.^[3] As a result of his injuries his right hand and arm were rendered useless but were saved from amputation after countless operations. Weaver’s father had declared to the operating surgeon "My son is an artist. He would rather die than live without arms.".^[4] Weaver had to teach himself to draw and paint using his left arm, which was never at full strength.

In 1923, he married Irene (Rene) Eleanor Villiers, another artist. They had a daughter and two sons. Hawkins settled his family in Australia in 1935. He died on August 13, 1977 in Willoughby, Australia.

Art career

After World War I, Harold studied at the Westminster Technical Institute and School of Art from 1919 to 1922, and took classes in etching from Sir Frank Short.^[5]

His first solo exhibit was held in 1923, and his work was displayed in the Royal Academy of Arts.

From 1923 until 1935 Hawkins and his wife and children traveled widely in France, Spain, Italy, Malta, Tahiti and New Zealand before finally settling in Australia.

In 1927, to avoid public and media perceptions of being identified as a 'wounded artist' rather than an artist in his own right, Weaver began signing his paintings with the art-name 'Raokin,’ (the Italian phonetic pronunciation of 'Mr. Hawkins,') ^[6] although he later became more popularly known as Weaver Hawkins.

From 1941 and 1972 Hawkins had several exhibitions in Australia, especially with the Contemporary Art Society of Australia and the Sydney Printmakers. He was given several solo exhibitions at the Macquarie Galleries and the and Eva Breuer gallery. In 1963 Vladas Meskenas won the Helena Rubinstein portrait prize for a double portrait of Weaver and his wife.^[7]

In 1976, a retrospective exhibition of his work was held at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.^[8]

Weaver was a member of various art societies. He was a founding member and a president of the Contemporary Art Society, and in the early 1960s, a founding member of the Sydney Printmakers group, the first society of printmakers established after the end of the etching boom in the late 1930s when printmaking experienced a lull in Sydney for more than two decades.^[9]

Select Bibliography

• D. Thomas, Project 11: Weaver Hawkins, exhibition catalogue (Sydney, 1976)
• E. Chanin and S. Miller, ‘’The Art and Life of Weaver Hawkins’’ (Sydney, 1995)
• H. de Berg, interview with Weaver Hawkins (transcript, 1965, National Library of Australia)
• Hawkins papers (Art Gallery of New South Wales Library).

External links

• Australian Dictionary of Biography: Weaver Hawkins

References