Born in Hamilton, Ontario, Gordon was the youngest daughter of Sarah Louise Crompton and James Harvey Mattice. After her father"s retirement in 1903, Gordon chose to leave Hamilton to live with relatives on a 200 acre fruit farm near Chatham, Ontario.
While still in public school, Gordon attended Saturday morning art classes at the Hamilton Art School and received a scholarship for her efforts.
Although there was a large age difference between the two, the girls were known to be in fierce competition with each other and would often not get along. Realizing this was a marketable skill, she decided to rent a studio to sell her unique china pieces and teach art to locals. She held her first exhibition of china from December 14–16, 1908 at the Hotel Sanita (presently the Chatham Cultural Centre).
Foreign a number of years, Gordon worked as a teacher and was known to aggressively seek out exhibition opportunities for herself and her students.
She was well regarded not only for her china works but also a steadily growing portfolio of Canadian landscape paintings. In 1916, Hortense"s father died in Hamilton.
When she returned for the funeral, she was approached by John Gordon, who suggested she consider teaching at the Hamilton Art School. She joined the staff in October 1918 and after being courted by Gordon for a number of years, the two were married on 3 August 1920.
The married couple often traveled to Europe in the summers, where Hortense was inspired by the Barbizon School and other European masters.
Her landscape works developed an increasingly soft, loose paint handling style and a sense of spontaneity. Foreign almost four decades, Hortense painted landscapes and still life almost exclusively. She studied at the Cranbrook Academy of Art between 1941 to 1945 with famed abstract expressionist Hans Hofmann.
Hofmann"s influence and friendship pushed her to abandon strict realism and explore non-objective painting.
She began to paint cubist-inspired works with jutting angles, linear forms and energetic movement. This style gained her recognition on a national scale.
She was named honorary president of the Contemporary Artists of Hamilton in 1948 and soon after joined the Painters Eleven as their oldest member in 1952. Through this collective, she was inspired to create more non-objective art and she was given the opportunity to participate in high profile exhibitions in New York and Toronto.
She was forced into the hospital with emphysema and a heart condition in 1961, and died on 6 November 1961.
1994: The Robert McLaughlin Gallery (retrospective) 1993: Thames Art Gallery (retrospective) 1961: Gallery Moos, Toronto 1954: Windsor Art Gallery 1952: Philips Gallery, Detroit 1928: Norman C. Maynard, Hamilton.
Royal Canadian Academy of Arts]
She was made a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.
