 The founder of New Zealand's first public art gallery and the first person to publish at any length about New Zealand art, he was a considerable water colour painter in his own right.He encouraged his daughters, one of whom, Frances Hodgkins, was regarded as Britain's most distinguished woman artist at the time of her death and is still New Zealand's best regarded expatriate painter.Baptised in Liverpool 23 September 1833 in the heart of the city's slums he was the son of a brushmaker, also called William Hodgkins.