Frances Anne Hopkins

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Canoe Manned by Voyageurs Passing a Waterfall (Ontario), 1869, by Frances Anne Hopkins.

Frances Anne Hopkins, (b. February 2, 1838, – d. March 5, 1919), daughter of Frederick William Beechey was born in England and had a talent for painting. In 1858 she married a Hudson's Bay Company official Edward Hopkins whose work took him to North America. She accompanied him and travelled extensively by canoe along some of the most important fur trading routes. While travelling, she sketched extensively and thereby recorded an interesting aspect of Canadian history.

Her best-known works are several large paintings made from her sketches. They show voyageurs and their canoes with her husband and herself in with the paddlers.

Hopkins returned to England in 1870 where she lived until her death. Many of her paintings are part of the collection of the National Library and Archives of Canada. In 1988 a stamp was issued featuring one of her paintings and an inset sepia photograph of the artist.

Thomas Schultze has written an extensively annotated catalogue of Hopkins's work, which is forthcoming from Penumbra Press in spring 2008.