Sir Hudson Lowe

Sir Hudson Lowe , 1769-1844, British general. He fought with credit throughout the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, mainly in the Mediterranean region, and served (1815-21) as governor of St. Helena and custodian of Napoleon I. He was criticized severely for his alleged mistreatment of the French exiles on St. Helena. His later years were largely spent in controversy on this score, and he wrote a self-vindication.

Bibliography: See W. Forsyth, History of the Captivity of Napoleon at St. Helena (1853); R. C. Seaton, Napoleon's Captivity in Relation to Sir Hudson Lowe (1903).

Hudson, Thomas (1701–79). English portrait painter, a pupil of Jonathan Richardson the Elder, whose daughter he married. From the mid-1740s to the mid-1750s he was the leading fashionable portraitist in London, rivalled only by Ramsay. His studio produced a great deal of work, with much help from specialist assistants (see Drapery Painter), and Hudson has been described by Sir Ellis Waterhouse as ‘the last of the conscienceless artists, of whom Lely was the first in England, who turned out portraits to standard patterns and executed comparatively little of the work themselves’. Hudson went into semi-retirement in the late 1750s, when his former pupil Reynolds was rapidly rising in success. His other pupils included John Hamilton Mortimer and Joseph Wright.