
b. 1865 d. 1937
Site Affiliation: Grace Hudson Museum & Sun House
Grace Carpenter was born to well-educated pioneer parents in rural Mendocino County, California. Her talent for drawing was cultivated in the 1880s through professional training at the California School of Design. There, she excelled in portraiture. Soon after her studies, she returned to her parents’ Mendocino County home in Ukiah where she gave painting lessons and helped in her parents’ photography studio. In 1890 she married John Hudson — a physician with a deep passion for ethnography — and the couple made a life in Ukiah.
With John’s encouragement, Grace began painting the local Pomo Indian peoples, whom she had known since childhood. She went on to develop a national reputation as a painter of Native American subjects. Though she worked primarily in oils, Grace also produced lovely watercolors, pen and ink illustrations, and drawings in charcoal, pencil, and crayon. Today, she enjoys ongoing recognition for her portrayals of Native peoples.
Primary Medium: Painting
Primary Stylistic Term: Early California and American Western Art
Fun Fact: Edward Curtis, famed photographer of Native Americans, visited Grace and John Hudson at the Sun House in 1923. Grace and John provided Curtis some Pomo material culture from their personal collection to include in his photographs. Today, those items can be found in the collections of the Grace Hudson Museum, as well as a few Curtis photographic prints.
Recommended Publications: The Painter Lady: Grace Carpenter Hudson by Searles R. Boynton (1978); Grace Hudson: Artist of the Pomo Indians by Lucienne T. Lanson and Patricia L. Tetzlaff (2006); Days of Grace: California Artist Grace Hudson in Hawaii by Karen Holmes and Sherrie Smith Ferri (2014)