Erna Hoppe-Kinross (née Hoppe) was born in Hamburg, Germanyin 1878. She was educated in Paris and immigrated to London in 1915, after marrying an Englishman. Hoppe-Kinross was parimarily a landscape and figurative painter, associated with French impressionism, particularly the work of Monet.
Painter Erna Hoppe-Kinross (née Hoppe) was born in 1878 in Hamburg, Germany to Karl and Louise Hoppe. In 1906, she moved to Paris to study painting. Hoppe-Kinross soon became part of the cosmopolitan circle of artists and quickly established herself as a promising talent. Her work was accepted into the Salons (records note the exhibition of Collette au Verger in 1907) and the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, where she exhibited regularly between 1906 and 1914. In Paris she met the Englishman, Charles Kinross, whom she married during her studies. The couple maintained a home in the city, while spending summers in Giverny, where they formed a close friendship with Claude Monet. This period proved formative for Hoppe-Kinross, whose painting began to reflect the Impressionist master’s attention to shimmering colour and fleeting effects of light.
Hoppe-Kinross's oeuvre includes both landscape and figure subjects, often portraying women in outdoor settings, with a lyrical sensitivity to nature. Works such as Collette au Verger (Apple Harvest) and Girl in a Wood (c.1910) reveal a fascination with orchard and woodland scenes, where fluid brushstrokes and a radiant palette evoke atmosphere rather than precise description. The influence of Monet and the Impressionist milieu of Giverny can be seen in her treatment of foliage and dappled light, but her figural compositions also carry an intimacy and lyricism. She also exhibited with the Societe Nationale des Beaux-Arts and her first exposure in London was in 1910 in a group show at the Baillie Gallery. The London critics described her work as ‘entirely French in feeling’ and observed that ‘many of her portrait studies are extremely happy, especially those of chubby babies’ while highlighting some of her ‘impressionistic but convincing studies of Paris,’ (Lady's Pictorial, 1910, p. 42). Others have connected her work to that of Henri-Jean Guillaume Martin, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Monet, but nevertheless noted her ‘strong artistic individuality,’ ( Hull Daily Mail, 1910, p. 3).
In 1915, she and her husband relocated permanently to England, where Charles’s business was based. Hoppe-Kinross continued to work as an artist throughout her life in England, albeit on a smaller scale in terms of exhibitions, compared to her years in Paris. One of her canvases, Orchard Girl, was reproduced in Colour in 1919, a magazine that pprided itself on the newest processes of colour reproduction. After a lengthy hiatus, in 1963, almost at the end of her life, her paintings were included and spotlighted in an exhibition in Robert Peek’s Gallery in Kent, alongside the works of prominent names in British art, such as Augustus John and Edward Burra. Erna Hoppe-Kinross died in London, England in 1964. Her works are not part of any public collection in the UK. Information on Hoppe-Kinross remains limited, and the Ben Uri Research Unit welcomes contributions from researchers or family members who may know more.