Francois Hugo was born in South Africa in 1938.
He studied English and Fine Arts and became a professor in English at the university in Pietermaritzburg.
He married Lynnette Smallie, a (remedial) teacher.
After retiring, he returned in earnest to oil painting. In 2021, his work was exhibited at the Tatham Gallery in Pietermartizburg.
Francois Hugo was found murdered at his home in Hilton in 2021, just weeks after the exhibition had closed.
Francois Jean Hugo was born on 25 February in Dundee, Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa.
His parents, Francois (Frans) Hugo and Aletta Wahl, were teachers. They were Afrikaans-speaking and had moved to Natal from the Western Cape during the Great Depression. His father taught Afrikaans and later became the respected headmaster of the Dundee High School. His mother taught mathematics.
Although coming from an Afrikaans-speaking background, Francois and his brother, Eugene, attended English-medium schools. His parents believed that this would give them more opportunities in their future lives. Although the family moved several times due to his father being posted to different schools, most of Francois’ childhood was spent in Dundee – a quiet coal mining and agricultural town in Northern Natal. He attended Dundee High School, from which he graduated in 1955 as dux of the school.
Francois Hugo studied at the University of Kwazulu-Natal in Pietermaritzburg, majoring in English and Fine Arts.
Although Fine Arts was his preference, Francois decided a career in English was a safer choice, especially with a young family to provide for.
He began his academic career at Rhodes University in Grahamstown (now called Makhanda) in the Eastern Cape. He became a lecturer in the English Department at the University of Kwazulu-Natal in Durban. In 1966, he spent 6 months at the University of Exeter in Devon, England.
In 1971, he transferred to the English Department of the University of Kwazulu-Natal in Pietermaritzburg, where he remained until his retirement except for a year at the University of Western Australia in Perth in 1979.
Francois specialised in Wordsworth and published articles in the academic journal Theoria, some of which are available online.
Francois Hugo married Lynnette Smallie in 1961.
Lynnette was from Glencoe, a small coal mining and railway town just 8 km from Dundee, and their families knew each other. Lynette had also studied at the University of Kwazulu-Natal in Pietermaritzburg, majoring in English and Philosophy. Both Francois and Lynnette were awarded post-graduate scholarships by the university.
When they got married, Francois was a junior lecturer at the University of Kwazulu-Natal in Durban. Lynnette held a junior position at the Philosophy department at the same university.
Francois and Lynnette had two children, Charles (1962) and Joanna (1966).
In 1970, when Francois was offered a position at the University of Kwazulu-Natal in Pietermaritzburg, the family moved to Pietermaritzburg. They purchased the house in Hilton, on a the ridge 10 km west from the city, where they would spend the rest of their lives.
Lynnette worked as a teacher and later became a certified remedial teacher, working well past normal retirement age at Laddsworth School in Hilton. In her spare time, she made pottery and quilts. Both she and Francois were also passionate gardeners.
Lynnette struggled with back and hip problems all her life after a bad fall from a horse when she was a teenager. In 2016, she became bedridden after a fall that caused her hip replacement to shatter part of her pelvis. Sadly, she passed away in 2017 after a short illness.
After retiring in 1998, Francois Hugo had more spare time and he returned to painting. He had always painted watercolours, but he said that painting in oil required too much time and concentration to combine with his work.
Francois also wrote an unpublished novel Love in a Cycle of Fire about a young artist and his girlfriend during the troubled and violent latter days of apartheid. The novel includes many South African themes and the dilemma of whether to leave the country to escape oppression and violence or remain in one's homeland.
A selection of Francois’ oil and watercolour paintings were exhibited at the Tatham Gallery in Pietermaritzburg in 2021 in an exhibition titled Great Creating Nature. At the time, the restrictions due to the COVID pandemic complicated and imposed constraints on exhibitions in general.
Tragically, Francois Hugo was found murdered at this Hilton home on 29 April 2021, just a few weeks after the exhibition had closed.
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