Eliot Hodgkin (19 June 1905 – 30 May 1987) was an English painter, best known for his highly detailed still lifes executed either in tempera or oil.
[4] By the middle of the 1930s Hodgkin had established himself as a painter of still lifes, landscapes and murals, exhibiting regularly at the Royal Academy.
During World War II Hodgkin was working in the Home Intelligence Division of the Ministry of Information, and proposed making some drawings of plants growing in London's bomb sites.
[8] Eliot Hodgkin provided a brief description of his interest in still life painting in 1957, in response to an enquiry from the editors of The Studio: "In so far as I have any conscious purpose, it is to show the beauty of natural objects which are normally thought uninteresting or even unattractive: such things as Brussels sprouts, turnips, onions, pebbles and flints, bulbs, dead leaves, bleached vertebrae, an old boot cast up by the tide.
"[9] Hodgkin began painting in tempera in about 1937, using a medium based on a recipe given to him by Maxwell Armfield (1881–1972), his friend and former teacher.
'[10] On 24 April 1940, Hodgkin married Maria Clara (Mimi) Henderson (née Franceschi), his lifetime partner.
In 2019, after almost 30 years, Brought to Life: Eliot Hodgkin Rediscovered was the first major exhibition of the artist's works, and took place in Waddesdon Manor.