Thomas Hudson

Catalogue entry

N04804 Portrait of Mrs Collier 1744

Oil on canvas 737×610 (29×24) in painted oval
Inscribed ‘Ann Collier-Picture Drawn by M^r. Hudson 1744.’ on stretcher in sepia ink, in a contemporary or near-contemporary hand
Bequeathed by the Misses Mary Metford Badcock and L.M. Badcock of Taunton 1935
PROVENANCE ...; the Misses Mary M. Badcock and L.M. Badcock by 1935
LITERATURE Cecily Radford, ‘Mrs. Ann Collier of Topsham’, Devon and Cornwall Notes and Queries, XXVI, 1954–5, p.88; Miles 1976, p.212

Attached to the back is a wooden plank from the original stretcher, bearing the inscription and two contemporary labels, one inscribed ‘Mrs Collyer’, and the other ‘[?of] Topsham-Devon|Born Augt. 29^th 1700.|Married Sept. 2^nd 1739.|Died-Dec^r. 31^st. 1783.|Maiden name|Anne Nicholls-’. The authenticity of this inscription is partly confirmed by the Quaker registers of Topsham - an important Quaker centre - which, while they do not appear to have a record of the marriage, do record the death of Benjamin Collier at Topsham on 1 December 1758, aged sixty-one, and that of Ann, his relict, at Bridport on 31 December 1783. In her will, dated 9 August 1777, Mrs Collier left £500 in 3% consols for binding out poor children of the parish to some business or trade or to sea ‘without respect of party or sect’ (information from correspondence with Cecily Radford, 1954, in Gallery files).

The painting is a particularly charming example of Hudson's more intimate portrait style of this period and is typical of his widespread portrait practice in his native county of Devon in the 1740s.

Published in:
Elizabeth Einberg and Judy Egerton, The Age of Hogarth: British Painters Born 1675-1709, Tate Gallery Collections, II, London 1988

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