Portrait of a Young Woman in White

Hudson was among the leading artists in antebellum New Orleans, and he is one of the earliest documented American painters of African descent. Hudson died at the young age of 33, and scholars are just now beginning to reconstitute his body of work. His oeuvre is largely comprised of portraits of individuals from the thriving community of "gens de couleur libres," or free people of color, who inhabited New Orleans in the years before the Civil War. Hudson captured the likeness of this young woman shortly after returning from his second trip to Paris, where he is believed to have studied with Abel de Pujol (1785–1861), a student of Jacques-Louis David. Unfortunately, the identity of the sitter is now unknown, and the history of the portrait is fragmentary. The painting traveled from New Orleans to Kansas City, Missouri, in the early 20th century, but the details of its ownership before this period are not known.