Mayoral Portraits, John Hodgson, Ludwig Becker, c1855
Summary
Portrait of John Hodgson (Mayor 1853-55).
This portrait is one of the oldest surviving paintings in the City of Melbourne collection. Both its subject and painter were members of the organising committee for the ill-fated Burke and Wills expedition.
John Hodgson was born in Yorkshire in 1779 and arrived in Australia in 1838. He opened a goods store selling among other things bullock yokes and quality London hats. He was elected to council in 1850 as the Lonsdale Ward representative, and became a member of the Victorian Legislative Assembly in 1853, the same year that he became Mayor. During his seven years in Parliament he served on 14 committees and was appointed to the Royal Commission on the Goldfields in 1854. Biographers have described him as a conciliatory and kindly man, known for settling Council quarrels and his work for charity.
Ludwig Becker (c.1808-1861) was an artist, naturalist, geologist, meteorologist and explorer. Becker arrived in Tasmania from Germany in 1851. He had moderate success at the Victorian gold fields in 1852 and exhibited his gold field sketches on his return to Melbourne. Over the next eight years Becker became an important part of Melbourne’s cultural life. His botanical drawings were used to illustrate the books of Baron von Mueller, Director of the Melbourne Botanical Gardens.
In 1860 Becker was appointed official artist, scientist and geologist to the Burke and Wills expedition. As the expedition evolved from a scientific survey into a disastrous race against competing colonies, the aging Becker died a victim to scurvy, dysentery and exhaustion in 1861 at Bulloo in the southwest corner of Queensland. His sketches of the expedition are now housed at the State Library of Victoria.
