Grace Carpenter Hudson

A Day in the Life

Tools and Techniques

Picture Perfect

How did Grace Hudson make such detailed paintings of children? Did her young subjects have to stay still the whole time?

Often, Hudson did have her sitters pose for paintings. At times, though, she worked from photographs.

Hudson and her siblings became familiar with photography from a young age. Her father, Aurelius O. Carpenter, was a talented photographer and ran a commercial studio in Ukiah, California. Grace helped her father by hand-tinting photographic prints and generally assisting with the studio’s procedures.

Consequently, Hudson used this experience to take pictures of her young subjects and painted their portraits while looking at the printed images. The exacting detail and remarkable realism her portraits exhibit speak to Hudson’s incredible talent as a painter, and using photographs to record her subjects’ likenesses may have helped her develop this ability.

Whereas some painters have difficulty rendering volume and form when painting from photographs, resulting in a flattened effect, Hudson’s figures appear lifelike with luminous, fleshy skin and naturalistic texture in their clothing. The little boy’s worn cotton overalls appear soft to the touch!

Behind the Scenes

Look Closer

Just for Kids

Look!

At a young age, Grace Carpenter Hudson’s father taught her how to use the camera. She would later become both a painter and photographer. She often painted children of the Pomo Native Americans, who nicknamed her the “Painter Lady.”

Why do you think Grace Carpenter Hudson chose to paint the portraits of Pomo children? Why do you think she included the pet dog? If someone were to paint a portrait of you, would you want to include your pet or a favorite animal?

Look out for animals while you are at The DAI. Search through the galleries to find your favorite animal. Remember to look big and small. After you found your favorite animal, make a sketch of it.

Signs & Symbols

Dig Deeper

Arts Intersected

The Sculpture Speaks

Did You Know?

Expert Opinion

Balancing Act

Is Grace Hudson’s series of paintings an accurate portrayal of the Pomo culture? Art historian Kay Koeninger addresses the controversial nature of Grace Hudson’s body of work.

Grace Hudson’s paintings can be seen as typical examples of late Victorian and Edwardian sentimentality. However, the fact that they primarily depict Native American children prompts unease when we look at the images today. It is true that Hudson did some paintings of Native American adults, but she is best known for children. They often show no evidence of their Native American culture. This work contrasts with the paintings of the Taos School of artists in New Mexico who were working during the same time. In contrast, these artists focused on Native American adults within the context of their specific identity and history. When one of Hudson’s paintings of Native American children is shown by itself, due to its lack of context, it infantilizes and simplifies a whole culture. In contrast, many Native Americans were struggling to preserve their identities in the face of government repression and public prejudice during the period when Hudson’s paintings, such as the one on view, were created.

Kay Koeninger, Associate Professor of Art, Sinclair Community College

Look Around

Children and Animals in Nineteenth-Century Painting

Grace Carpenter Hudson’s painting of a Pomo boy and his dog is not unlike others in this gallery. Both children and animals—and often the two together—are seen in several paintings nearby.

In the 19th century, in the face of industrialization, slavery, and westward expansion, Americans were concerned about the uncertain future of their new republic. Artists turned to symbols of hope for the future: children.

Where animals are also included, they inject an element of liveliness and innocence to the composition. Several paintings in this gallery feature a child with a dog. What characteristics do these pairings imply about their young subjects?

About the Artist

The Painter Lady

The Grace Hudson Museum was the first museum in the United States dedicated to a female artist when it was founded in 1986, and it remained the only one until 1997 when the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum opened!

The following video portrays Huell Howser, of the Huell Howser California’s Gold television series, visiting the Grace Hudson Museum and speaking with curator Marvin Schenck about Hudson’s effort to document the Pomo people of Mendocino County, California.

Transcript:

Huell Howser: This is the core of the museum, the core of the collection. Tell us what it is we are seeing and why it is so significant.

Marvin Schenck: Grace Hudson, during her career, did 684 numbered portraits that she kept track of in her diary as her professional work. This is number 1.

HH: This tells everyone why her work was so important because her paintings all centered around Native Americans. She was doing something that few people in that era were doing.

MS: Well this is true. She was trying to document primarily the Pomo people of this area but she also did other Native Americans as well, in her travels. This number 1 painting is called National Thorn and it gives us a clue to Grace’s approach and what made her paintings of the Native Americans different from, say, Remington and Russell and so forth, in that she was painting from a woman’s point of view and she is saying in this painting, “How can this beautiful child wrapped tightly in a Pomo cradle basket, guarded by the Pomo’s dog while the mother’s gathering food, how can this child be a threat to the white settlers of the west? How can it be a thorn in their side?” And this approach caught hold and she became nationally famous for her paintings of primarily the children, but she expanded her painting to cover myths and various other scenes of the Pomo and medicine men and grown women and so forth.

Used with permission from Chapman University: Huell Howser California’s Gold Archives.

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