London-born Robert Hodgins immigrated to South Africa in 1938 and served in the Union Defence Force during WWII. After the war, he studied art and education at Goldsmiths College, University of London, before returning to South Africa in 1954 to teach, first at the Pretoria Technical College School of Art, and then for nearly twenty years at the University of the Witwatersrand. He only became a full-time artist in the early 1980s when he was in his sixties. Hodgins mentored generations of artists, many of whom have achieved international recognition.

Prior to his death in 2010, he donated his collection of over 400 original prints from his extensive print-making oeuvre, produced during a lengthy artistic career, to the Wits Art Museum. The exhibition of these works in 2013 was accompanied by the publication of A Lasting Impression: The Robert Hodgins Print Archive (WAM). The Goodman Gallery retrospective show in 2013, Looking Back, presented a full range of his diverse oeuvre and included pencil drawings, prints, watercolours, tapestries, monoprints, ceramic sculpture, and oil paintings. In 2015, Hodgins’ J'accuse was sold by Strauss & Co, Cape Town, at their flagship March auction for a record price of R2 200 000.