Sir James Hudson
GCB (1810 – 20 September 1885) was a British diplomat. He is noted for his time as British ambassador to Turin between 1852 and 1863, as an
italophile and strong supporter of
Italian unification, and a collector of Italian art.
Early life
Hudson was born at
Bessingby in the
East Riding of Yorkshire
The East Riding of Yorkshire, or simply East Riding or East Yorkshire, is a ceremonial county and unitary authority area in the Yorkshire and the Humber region of England. It borders North Yorkshire to the north and west, South Yorkshire to t ...
, England, the eighth son of Harrington Hudson of Bessingby Hall, and his wife Lady Anne Townshend, daughter of George,
1st Marquess Townshend. He was educated at
Rugby School
Rugby School is a public school (English independent boarding school for pupils aged 13–18) in Rugby, Warwickshire, England.
Founded in 1567 as a free grammar school for local boys, it is one of the oldest independent schools in Britain. ...
(1823–1825) and at
Westminster School
(God Gives the Increase)
, established = Earliest records date from the 14th century, refounded in 1560
, type = Public school Independent day and boarding school
, religion = Church of England
, head_label = Hea ...
(1825–1826). For three years during his youth he was sent to Italy, where he returned as part of European travel in the late 1820s.
[Fleming, John; ''The Burlington Magazine'' Vol. 115, No. 838 (January 1973), pp. 4–16. The Burlington Magazine Publications Ltd.]
Court and diplomatic service
Hudson first entered
court
A court is any person or institution, often as a government institution, with the authority to adjudicate legal disputes between parties and carry out the administration of justice in civil, criminal, and administrative matters in acco ...
as a page to
George III
George III (George William Frederick; 4 June 173829 January 1820) was King of Great Britain and of Ireland from 25 October 1760 until the union of the two kingdoms on 1 January 1801, after which he was King of the United Kingdom of Great Br ...
. In 1830 he became clerk to the
Lord Chamberlain
The Lord Chamberlain of the Household is the most senior officer of the Royal Household of the United Kingdom, supervising the departments which support and provide advice to the Sovereign of the United Kingdom while also acting as the main c ...
and, between 1831 and 1837, usher to
Queen Adelaide
, house = Saxe-Meiningen
, father = Georg I, Duke of Saxe-Meiningen
, mother = Princess Louise Eleonore of Hohenlohe-Langenburg
, birth_date =
, birth_place = Meiningen, Saxe-Meiningen, Holy  ...
, consort of
William IV
William IV (William Henry; 21 August 1765 – 20 June 1837) was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and King of Hanover from 26 June 1830 until his death in 1837. The third son of George III, William succeeded h ...
. Between 1830 and 1837 he was secretary to
Sir Herbert Taylor, the private secretary to William IV. At the accession of
Victoria
Victoria most commonly refers to:
* Victoria (Australia), a state of the Commonwealth of Australia
* Victoria, British Columbia, provincial capital of British Columbia, Canada
* Victoria (mythology), Roman goddess of Victory
* Victoria, Seychelle ...
, he, with other officials from the court of William IV, left
Windsor Castle
Windsor Castle is a royal residence at Windsor in the English county of Berkshire. It is strongly associated with the English and succeeding British royal family, and embodies almost a millennium of architectural history.
The original c ...
.
Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerston
Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston, (20 October 1784 – 18 October 1865) was a British statesman who was twice Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in the mid-19th century. Palmerston dominated British foreign policy during the period ...
appointed Hudson as secretary to successive British Legations: Washington (1838), The Hague (1845), and to Rio de Janeiro, where, in 1850, he became Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary
An envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary, usually known as a minister, was a diplomatic head of mission who was ranked below ambassador. A diplomatic mission headed by an envoy was known as a legation rather than an embassy. Under the ...
. He was posted to the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, and in 1852, to Turin
Turin ( , Piedmontese: ; it, Torino ) is a city and an important business and cultural centre in Northern Italy. It is the capital city of Piedmont and of the Metropolitan City of Turin, and was the first Italian capital from 1861 to 1865. The ...
.
Italy
Hudson returned to Italy when appointed by the 1852–55 UK coalition government to the British Legation at Piedmont
it, Piemontese
, population_note =
, population_blank1_title =
, population_blank1 =
, demographics_type1 =
, demographics1_footnotes =
, demographics1_title1 =
, demographics1_info1 =
, demographics1_title2 ...
, specifically to promote representative democracy
Representative democracy, also known as indirect democracy, is a type of democracy where elected people represent a group of people, in contrast to direct democracy. Nearly all modern Western-style democracies function as some type of represe ...
. He developed a close relationship with Camillo Cavour, Prime Minister of Piedmont-Sardinia
The Kingdom of Sardinia,The name of the state was originally Latin: , or when the kingdom was still considered to include Corsica. In Italian it is , in French , in Sardinian , and in Piedmontese . also referred to as the Kingdom of Savoy-S ...
, later the first Prime Minister of a united Italy, and other leading Italian liberals, Giuseppe Massari, Marco Minghetti
Marco Minghetti (18 November 1818 – 10 December 1886) was an Italian economist and statesman.
Biography
Minghetti was born at Bologna, then part of the Papal States.
He signed the petition to the Papal conclave, 1846, urging the electio ...
, Bettino Ricasoli
Bettino Ricasoli, 1st Count of Brolio, 2nd Baron Ricasoli (; 9 March 180923 October 1880) was an Italian statesman. He was a central figure in the politics of Italy during and after the unification of Italy. He led the Moderate Party.
Biography
...
, Giovanni Morelli
Giovanni Morelli (25 February 1816 – 28 February 1891) was an Italian art critic and political figure. As an art historian, he developed the "Morellian" technique of scholarship, identifying the characteristic "hands" of painters through s ...
["Morelli, Giovanni (Lorenzo)"]
; Dictionary of Art Historians. Retrieved 5 May 2012. – mentions Sir James Hudson, Sir Charles Lock Eastlake and Sir Austen Henry Layard with links. and Verdi
Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi (; 9 or 10 October 1813 – 27 January 1901) was an Italian composer best known for his operas. He was born near Busseto to a provincial family of moderate means, receiving a musical education with the h ...
, which caused Lord Malmesbury
Earl of Malmesbury is a title in the Peerage of Great Britain. It was created in 1800 for the diplomat James Harris, 1st Baron Malmesbury. The son of the grammarian and politician James Harris, he served as Ambassador to Spain, Prussia, Russi ...
, Foreign Minister of the 1858–59 Tory administration, to describe Hudson as "more Italian than the Italians themselves", and Victoria to express her displeasure at his closeness to the Italian liberal cause.[ Wellesley, Henry Richard Charles (1928) ''The Paris embassy during the Second Empire;: Selections from the papers of Henry Richard Charles Wellesley, 1st earl Cowley, ambassador at Paris, 1852–1867''; T. Butterworth, London, pp. 212, 213] Hudson's intimate association with Italian patriots was seen as too partisan for a man in his position, however, Malmesbury understood Hudson's reluctance to act in a way that could prevent a war (between France and Austria) that could lead to unification[ According to Lord Cowley, British Ambassador in Paris, Cavour went further, believing Hudson to be a greater revolutionary than any Italian, had encouraged the Sardinian Government to action, and whose home was the rendezvous for disaffected liberals.][ The '']Times
Time is the continued sequence of existence and events, and a fundamental quantity of measuring systems.
Time or times may also refer to:
Temporal measurement
* Time in physics, defined by its measurement
* Time standard, civil time speci ...
'' commented that although he had acted in accordance with the desires of English people, he had disregarded directions from two successive governments.[
Hudson was a collector of Italian art. His interest in painting fostered friendships with Massimo d'Azeglio, Prime Minister of Piedmont, and Giovanni Morelli,][ who were entertained at the British Legation. Hudson's mutual friends, art historian and diplomat ]Austen Layard
Sir Austen Henry Layard (; 5 March 18175 July 1894) was an English Assyriologist, traveller, cuneiformist, art historian, draughtsman, collector, politician and diplomat. He was born to a mostly English family in Paris and largely raised in It ...
and Florence-based English artist William Blundell Spence
William Blundell Spence (13 January 1814 – 23 January 1900) was an English painter and art dealer.
Born in Drypool, Yorkshire, to noted entomologist William Spence and his wife Elizabeth Blundell, he spent the years 1826-1832 travelling abroad ...
were visitors, and all could have been longstanding friends, Layard and Spence being at school together in Florence during Hudson's visit in 1829. First mention of Hudson's collection at the Legation was in 1856 by a National Gallery
The National Gallery is an art museum in Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, in Central London, England. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The current Director ...
agent, who noted the ''Portrait of a Young Knight'' by Moretto da Brescia
Alessandro Bonvicino (also Buonvicino) (possibly 22 December 1554), more commonly known as Moretto, or in Italian Il Moretto da Brescia (the Moor of Brescia), was an Italian Renaissance painter from Brescia, where he also mostly worked. His ...
, seen again during a viewing of all Legation paintings by Sir Charles Eastlake, director of the National Gallery;[ The Moretto was acquired for the Gallery in 1857. The same year, a description of the Legation was given by the wife of the secretary to the ]Prussia
Prussia, , Old Prussian: ''Prūsa'' or ''Prūsija'' was a German state on the southeast coast of the Baltic Sea. It formed the German Empire under Prussian rule when it united the German states in 1871. It was ''de facto'' dissolved by an ...
n Minister at Turin who had heard of the richness of Hudson's home; she compared it favourably to other Turin legations, mentioning "beautiful things" and Hudson's devotion to paintings. At the end of his tenure Hudson sold the Legation artworks, but gave a Titian
Tiziano Vecelli or Vecellio (; 27 August 1576), known in English as Titian ( ), was an Italian (Venetian) painter of the Renaissance, considered the most important member of the 16th-century Venetian school. He was born in Pieve di Cadore, nea ...
copy, ascribed to Poussin
Nicolas Poussin (, , ; June 1594 – 19 November 1665) was the leading painter of the classical French Baroque style, although he spent most of his working life in Rome. Most of his works were on religious and mythological subjects painted for ...
, to Verdi and a Jacopo de' Barbari
Jacopo de' Barbari, sometimes known or referred to as de'Barbari, de Barberi, de Barbari, Barbaro, Barberino, Barbarigo or Barberigo (c. 1460/70 – before 1516), was an Italian painter, printmaker and miniaturist with a highly individual style. H ...
to Layard.
Later life
In 1863 he was offered the ambassadorial post at Constantinople
la, Constantinopolis ota, قسطنطينيه
, alternate_name = Byzantion (earlier Greek name), Nova Roma ("New Rome"), Miklagard/Miklagarth (Old Norse), Tsargrad ( Slavic), Qustantiniya ( Arabic), Basileuousa ("Queen of Cities"), Megalopolis ( ...
by the then Foreign Secretary, Lord John Russell
John Russell, 1st Earl Russell, (18 August 1792 – 28 May 1878), known by his courtesy title Lord John Russell before 1861, was a British Whig and Liberal statesman who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1846 to 1852 and a ...
; this he refused, not wanting to leave Italy.[ He chose retirement, which was spent mainly in Italy where he undertook various business interests, including railway projects, and became a director of the Anglo-Italian Bank, and a director of the Italian Lands & Public Works development company, which financed Milan's ]Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II
The Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II () is Italy's oldest active shopping gallery and a major landmark of Milan in Italy. Housed within a four-story double arcade in the centre of town, the ''Galleria'' is named after Victor Emmanuel II, the first ki ...
and other public works in Florence.[''England and Italy a Century Age'', edited Carlo de Cugna. Banca Commerciale Italiana (1967)] In 1864 he moved from Turin to a villa in the Tuscan hills near Pistoia, to be near what would be the new Italian capital of Florence, and stayed here until his death. He died on 20 September 1885 at Strasbourg, after travelling there for an operation, and is buried in Florence. During his diplomatic career he was awarded a CB (1851), a KCB (1855) and a GCB (1863).[
]
References
External links
"Excerpts from Memoirs of an Ex-Minister by the Right Honorable The Earl of Malmesbury, G.C.B. 1884"
Clan Cameron Archives. Anecdotal notes concerning Sir James Hudson: 6, 10, 12 October 1859. Retrieved 5 May 2012
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hudson, Sir James
1810 births
1885 deaths
People from Bridlington
British diplomats
Knights Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath
People educated at Westminster School, London
People educated at Rugby School