Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins
Born 8 February 1807
Died 27 January 1894
Active: 1820 - 1894
Country of birth and death: England
Illustrator, etcher, liptographer, artist and sculptor
He was the son of Thomas Hawkins (1777/8–1811), artist, and his wife, Louisa Anna (b. 1781/2), daughter of William Waterhouse, a plantation owner in Jamaica. Benjamin began his studies in sculpture under William Behnes. On 4 July 1826 he married Mary Selina Green (1804–1880), and they had five children. A decade later, on 23 April 1836, Hawkins bigamously married Frances Louisa Keenan (1811–1884), daughter of the artist John Keenan. She was a portrait painter who exhibited at the Royal Academy between 1839 and 1868. They remarried in a civil ceremony on 17 May 1883.
Works
Dates are usually the year a work was exhibited so may differ from date of production.
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Exhibitions, Meetings, Awards and other Events
Exhibited at The Exhibition of the Royal Academy of Arts (Summer Exhibition), 1768-
1847 - 1849
Exhibited four works in three consecutive years (two portraits in 1847, a model of aurochs commissioned by the Emperor of Russia, and a model from the life of a jaguar commissioned by Queen Victoria, both works presented to the Zoological Society of London).
Exhibited at Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations (London), 1851
1851
Sources
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
2004
McCarthy, S. Hawkins, Benjamin Waterhouse (1807–1894), natural history artist and sculptor. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-54370 (accessed 28 January 2022)
Citing this record
'Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins', Mapping the Practice and Profession of Sculpture in Britain and Ireland 1851-1951, University of Glasgow History of Art and HATII, online database 2011 [http://sculpture.gla.ac.uk/view/person.php?id=msib7_1206540727, accessed 26 Sep 2023]
