Justine Hopkins read English and Drama at Bristol University, followed by an MA at the Courtauld Institute. After a year as an archaeological illustrator, she took a PhD at Birkbeck College exploring relationships between science, religion and landscape painting in the nineteenth century. Her biography of her step-grandfather, painter and sculptor Michael Ayrton was published in 1994; in 2020 she edited and wrote Picture Notes for Ideas, Images, Reflections: Michael Ayrton, published this year to celebrate Ayrton's centenary. She has contributed articles to a wide variety of periodicals and dictionaries; an article on Serb sculptor Ivan Meštrović appeared in Sculpture Journal in 2016. She works as a freelance lecturer in Art History for institutions including the Victoria and Albert Museum and Oxford and Cambridge Universities; she is a registered lecturer for the Arts Society.
