Weaver Hawkins

(1893-1977)

Self Portrait, 1923

Footnotes

PROVENANCE
Raokin Collection, New South Wales
thence by descent
Private collection, New South Wales

EXHIBITED
H.F. Weaver Hawkins, Macquarie Galleries, Sydney, 17-29 March 1976, cat.1 (label attached verso)
H.F. Weaver Hawkins, Macquarie Galleries, Canberra, 23 September - 10 October 1976, cat.1
Weaver Hawkins Retrospective, Newcastle Region Art Gallery, Newcastle, 25 October – 20 December 1994, then touring; S.H. Ervin Gallery, Sydney, 2 June – 16 July 1995

LITERATURE
Geoffrey de Groen, 'Scenes from a protected past', The Canberra Times, Canberra, 1 October 1976, p.11
Eileen Chanin and Steven Miller, The Life and Art of Weaver Hawkins, Craftsman House, Sydney, 1995, pl.4, p.111 (illus.)
Felicity Fenner, 'An outsider remembered', The Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney, 16 June 1995, p.14
Bruce James, 'Wounded nomad who found a home', The Age, Melbourne, 12 July 1995, p.24 (illus.)


In early 1914, the eve of World War I, Weaver Hawkins was 21 and had been intent on a career as an art teacher. As discussion of the impending war gripped the world, he enlisted in the Queen's Westminster Rifles, a decision that was to have devastating results. 'Sent to the Western Front, Hawkins was seriously wounded at Gommecourt, France, on 1 July 1916: 'The whole place roaring with flames, a wonderful sight . . . gas . . . we were to be a sacrificial attack . . . all the men with me were killed . . . I crawled back for two days'.1 A gruelling series of operations, 20 in total, managed to save Hawkins' arms from amputation, though his right hand remained lifeless and the left became a less-than-full-strength painting hand.

'In London, before the war, he had been a talented art student, and so he learned to draw again. The fine controlled line of his prints and drawings show that Hawkins recovered all of his manual dexterity, but for the rest of his life he was taunted by the descriptions of 'Crippled Artist'.
In the long term it was his mind more than his body that was affected... Hawkins was not content to paint purely formal subjects. He needed to tell of the grief caused by men of power playing war games.'2

The present work, painted in 1923, 7 years after the battle of the Somme and 12 years prior to settling in Australia, is a powerful self-portrait. Portrayed in a defiant stance his steely gaze directed at the viewer overshadows his lifeless right hand supporting his crippled left. It is a testimony to his tenacity and purpose in pursuing his artistic goals.

Marrying Irene Eleanor Villiers in 1923, Hawkins travelled extensively with his family before finally settling in Australia in 1935. Disinterested in being perceived as wounded or less than whole, from 1927 Hawkins would employ an alias, signing many of his works 'Raokin' in an attempt to avoid unwanted publicity as an artist working within the limitations of injuries.


1 Daniel Thomas, 'Weaver Hawkins', Australian Dictionary of Biography, 1996, vol.14
2 Joanna Mendelssohn, 'Sydney Art: Weaver Hawkins', The Australian, 16 June 1995, p.10