Grace Hudson

born Potter Valley, California, 1865; died Ukiah, California, 1937

BiographyBorn Grace Carpenter, the artist began her formal artistic training at the California School of Design (now San Francisco Art Institute) around the age of 15. After a brief failed marriage she returned home to Ukiah, California, opening a studio, teaching art, and assisting her father with his photography business. In 1890 she married John Hudson, a doctor for the San Francisco and North Pacific Railroad who later became an ethnographer. They shared a passionate interest in the Pomo Indians of Northern California, collecting a number of baskets and other objects. Grace Hudson began focusing on Pomo subjects in her work, eventually painting over 650 images. The exhibition of some of these paintings at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago brought her extensive attention and launched her national career. In addition to her California subjects, she also painted briefly in Hawaii and Japan and made sketches of Pawnee tribal members in Oklahoma Territory around 1903. Further, Hudson created illustrations for national magazines, including Sunset and Cosmopolitan.

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