Thomas Hudson

British 1701 - 1779

Thomas Hudson was a painter of portraits. He was born in Devon but spent most of his working life in London as well as practising a good deal in the West Country.

He was a pupil of Jonathan Richardson whose daughter he married in 1725.

Hudson must have also studied under the auspices of Van Loo in London between 1737 and 1742 and whose fashionable practice he succeeded. Hudson inherited the solemn prose of both Richardson and Van Loo and his work appealed to the more formal and traditional of sitters who resisted the introduction of portraiture into the ‘genial’ as exploited by Highmore and Hogarth