Francis Hodge

British painter Francis Hodge submitted three paintings to the 1932 Los Angeles Olympic Games. At the age of 15 he went to the Plymouth School of Art, and in 1905 he moved to London to work for the Royal College of Art. He also attended Westminster School of Art, the Slade School of Fine Art and the school jointly run by Welsh painter Augustus John and Irish portrait artist William Orpen. At the start of his career he worked for various magazines and newspapers as an illustrator but realised it wasn’t for him and he moved away from London in 1909 where he painted and taught art, in other parts of Britain. He worked briefly in Paris before taking over a class at the London School of Art in 1913. During the First World War he obtained a commission with the Royal Artillery but, in 1917, he was badly gassed and invalided out of the Army. However, he recovered enough to return to the front line, as an official war artist. After the war, he continued his portrait painting and exhibited at the Royal Academy and Royal Portrait Society as well as exhibiting in Buenos Aires. He was also very popular as an art teacher. He lived at Chelsea at the time of his death at the Middlesex hospital.