Galerie Paul Prouté

Hawkins was born in Germany to an English father, a naval officer, and an Austrian mother, a baroness. Unwilling to embrace the military career to which they had destined him, the young artist broke with his family and moved to France in the 1870s, before being naturalised in 1895. In Paris, he studied at the Académie Julian under William Bouguereau and Jules Lefebvre, before joining Gustave Boulanger’s studio at the Académie des Beaux-Arts. Initially exposed to a certain realism inspired by Jules Bastien-Lepage, he came into contact with all kinds of inspirations, enabling him to forge his own style.
In the 1900s, to support his family, he produced a few texts and illustrations for the magazine L’OEuvre d’Art Internationale, published by his brother-in-law François Zeppa, and ventured into the field of decorative arts. He designed several mask projects, drawing inspiration in particular from Histoires de Masques by his friend Jean Lorrain. This theme was very popular at the turn of the century, particularly in the Symbolist milieu, with which Hawkins was close from the 1890s onwards.