^* Mr. William Hodges, a landscape painter, engaged by the Admiralty “to make drawings and paintings of such places in the countries we should touch at as might be proper to give a more perfect idea thereof than could be formed from written description only.”—(Cook's Voyage towards the South Pole, vol. i, p. 34.) When but in his teens, Hodges became the pupil and assistant of Richard Wilson, R.A. During the years 1766–1772 he exhibited several pictures at the Society of Artists. When Cook was preparing for his second voyage, Hodges, through the interest of Lord Palmerston, obtained the post of draughtsman. The years 1778–84 he spent in India under the patronage of Warren Hastings, being elected an Associate of the Royal Academy on his return, and an Academician in 1789. In 1793 he published an account of his travels in India. A portrait of him, by G. Dance, is preserved in the Royal Academy, and one, by Westall, will be found in the Literary Magazine, 1793. A number of his pictures are still preserved in the Admiralty, and the British and South Kensington Museums.—Dictionary of National Biography, vol. xxvii, p. 61.