German-born English-French Symbolist painter, who became famous because of his fine and dreamy female portraits.
His mother was an Austrian Baroness, his father an Englishman. Hawkins moved soon to France and later took French nationality. He attended the Académie Julian in Paris, as a pupil of William Bouguereau, Jules Lefebvre and Gustave Boulanger.
He rose to fame after his expositions in the Salon de la Société des Artistes Francais. His first works were shown in the Salon in 1881. After that, expositions followed at the Salon de la Société des Beaux Artes (1894–1911), the Salon de la Rose-Croix (1894–1895) and La Libre Esthétique in Brussels.
He maintained close relationships with the writers involved in the Symbolist movement: Jean Lorrain, Paul Adam, Laurent Tailhade, Robert de Montesquiou, and Stéphane Mallarmé.
He lived for a period with Camille Pelletan, a radical socialist politician, and he continued to move in radical circles. In his Portrait of Séverine (1895), he shows a popular journalist, Caroline Rémy (1855-1929) who was a famous defender of humanitarian causes. He was also friendly with artists such as James Abbott McNeill Whistler and Auguste Rodin, whose portrait he painted.
Louis Welden Hawkins spent his last years in Brittany, where he painted mostly landscapes. He died in Paris on 1 May 1910 at age 60 and was honoured a year later at the Salon Nationale.
Link to Wikipedia biography