Unknown Gentleman

Location

Country: UK
City: London
Place: Government Art Collection

The sitter represented here bears a resemblance to a portrait of Henry Howard, 12th Earl of Suffolk and 5th Earl of Berkshire (1739-1779) in the Eton College Collection (ref: FDA-P.308-2010).

Thomas Hudson (1701-1779) was a portrait painter and an art collector from Devon. He was a pupil of the English artist and collector Jonathan Richardson (1665–1745), whose daughter Mary he had married by 1725. Hudson worked primarily in the West Country prior to Richardson’s retirement from painting in 1740; after this date his reputation grew in the capital as he inherited Richardson’s former clients. He is thought to have painted around 400 portraits over the course of his career, an output which was aided by his employment of the Flemish artist working in England, Joseph van Aken (c.1699–1749). He also later employed his brother Alexander (1701–1757) as a drapery painter. Hudson was one of a number of prominent artists who met at Old Slaughter’s Coffee House in London in the mid 1740s, at a time before formal artistic academies had been established in Britain. Other painters who frequented the coffee house include William Hogarth (1697–1764), Francis Hayman (c.1708–1776), Allan Ramsay (1713–1784), and the sculptor John Michael Rysbrack (c.1684–1770). Hudson also travelled to France and the Low Countries in 1748 with Hogarth, Hayman and van Aken. In 1752 he visited Rome, as many British artists were increasingly to do, with the sculptor Louis-François Roubiliac (1695–1762).Among the list of Hudson’s apprentices are Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792), Joseph Wright of Derby (1734–1797), and John Hamilton Mortimer (1740–1779). After the mid 1760s Hudson received less work and soon retired to Twickenham, where he died in 1779.

People

unknown man

Places

Subjects

male portrait, man, 18th century costume, van dyke collar

Materials & Techniques

canvas, oil, oil painting

Artist

Thomas Hudson (1701 - 1779)

Title

Unknown Gentleman

Date

c1750

Medium

Oil on canvas

Dimensions

height: 74.00 cm, width: 61.50 cm

Acquisition

Purchased from Agnew's, January 1949

Provenance

With Agnew’s Gallery, London; from whom purchased in January 1949

GAC number

708