Ben Uri Research Unit

for the study and digital recording of the Jewish, Refugee and wide Immigrant contribution to British visual culture since 1900.


Anna Hudson artist

Anna 'Nan' Hudson was born into a well-established family in New York, USA in 1869. Aged 24 she moved to Europe, first settling in Paris to commence her art studies in 1892. She trained in painting at a number of French art institutions, including the Académie Carrière, where she met her future life partner, the painter Ethel Sands. The two lived and worked in France and England. Sands and Hudson held a joint exhibition together at the Carfax Galleries, London, in 1912. In 1913 Hudson became a co-founder of The London Group, a progressive exhibiting society, formed from the merger of the Fitzroy Street Group and the Camden Town Group.

Born: 1869 New York, USA

Died: 1957 London, England

Other name/s: Nan Hudson, Anna Hope Hudson


Biography

Painter Anna Hope 'Nan' Hudson was born into a wealthy family in New York, USA on 10 September 1869. Her grandfather, Samuel Carpenter, was a partner in a banknote engraving company (later part of the American Banknote Company). In 1892, aged 24 she became financially independent and moved to Europe, first settling in Paris, where she began her art studies. She trained in painting at a number of French art institutions, including under the French Symbolist painter Eugène Carrière at the Académie Carrière, where, in 1897, she also met her future life partner, the artist Ethel Sands. She also trained briefly with Flemish painter Henri Evenepoel. In France Hudson had some success as a painter, focussing mainly on landscapes with an architectural interest, interiors, and portraits; her view of the Giudecca Canal in Venice was selected for the 1906 Salon d'Automne in Paris. The following year the painter Walter Sickert invited Hudson and Sands to join the Fitzroy Street Group in London. Sickert was a great admirer of Hudson's painting and the two remained lifelong friends. He often invited her to work in his studio and painted a portrait of her in 1910. Sands and Hudson held a joint exhibition together at London's Carfax Galleries in 1912. In 1913 Hudson became a co-founder of the progressive London Group, the merger of the Fitzroy Street Group and the Camden Town Group, in a move to further gender equality within the male-dominated English art world.

In 1920 Hudson bought the Château d’Auppegard, a seventeenth-century house near Dieppe in Normandy, which became her French home with Sands and which she lovingly restored and decorated. Hudson's painting of the house, created after 1927, is held in the Tate collection. Hudson and Sands often welcomed Bloomsbury figures such as Virginia Woolf, for dinner and an overnight stay at the Château (Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant would paint a fresco on the loggia in 1927). Their wide social circle not only included the Bloomsbury group but also Augustus John, George Moore, Logan Pearsall Smith, Boris Anrep, Arnold Bennett, Percy Lubbock, Bernard and Mary Berenson, among other writers, artists, and critics. Hudson took a studio locally where she produced watercolour flower paintings and French landscapes. Sands and Hudson continued to live and paint between France and England, also purchasing homes in London and Oxfordshire, where Sands frequently held salon-style gatherings.

While living in England, Hudson exhibited at the New English Art Club (NEAC), Leicester Galleries, and the Allied Artists Association (AAA). She continued to show work with The London Group until 1938. During the First and Second World Wars both Sands and Hudson worked as nurses. During the Blitz, Sand's London house in Chelsea was destroyed as a result of a parachute mine, while Hudson's French home was ransacked, resulting in the loss of the majority of her paintings. Anna Hudson died in London, England on 17 September 1957. Her work is held in UK public collections including Tate, York Museums Trust, Derby Museums and Art Gallery, and the Government Art Collection, while her letters from Walter Sickert are held in the Tate Archive.

Related books

  • Simon Watney, ‘The Murals at the Château d’Auppegard’, Charleston Magazine, No. 23, Spring/Summer 2001, pp. 31-37
  • Mary Ann Caws and Sarah Bird Wright, Bloomsbury and France: Art and Friends (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999)
  • Wendy Baron and Francis Farmar eds., The Painters of Camden Town, 1905–1920 (London: Christie’s, 1988)
  • Wendy Baron, Miss Ethel Sands and Her Circle (London: Peter Owen, 1977)
  • Wendy Baron, Camden Town Recalled (London: Fine Art Society, 1976)

Related organisations

  • Académie Carrière (student)
  • Allied Artists' Association (exhibitor)
  • Fitzroy Street Group (member)
  • London Group (co-founder)
  • New English Art Club (member)

Related web links

Selected exhibitions

  • The Painters of Camden Town, 1905–1920, Christie's, London ( 1988)
  • Miss Ethel Sands and her Circle, Fine Art Society, London (1977)
  • Camden Town Recalled, Fine Art Society, London (1976)
  • Joint exhibition with Ethel Sands, Carfax Gallery, London (1912)
  • Salon d’Automne, Paris (1906)
  Anna Hudson
   
Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Anna Hudson]

Ben Uri library

Publications related to [Anna Hudson] in the Ben Uri Library