Two small paintings with an enormous story have come home to the French Quarter. The Historic New Orleans Collection has acquired two exceedingly rare portraits from 1835 by Julien Hudson — Creole Boy with a Moth and Free Black Man Wearing a Turban — and both are now on view, free to visit, on the second floor of HNOC’s Williams Research Center at 410 Chartres Street.
Hudson is one of the most fascinating figures in early American art. Born in New Orleans in 1811, the son of a property-owning free woman of color and an English merchant, he began as a tailor’s apprentice, trained as a painter in New Orleans and Paris, and became Louisiana’s first native-born portraitist — and the second-known portraitist of color in America. He died at just 33, and only six of his works are known to survive, which makes seeing two of them side by side a genuinely rare treat.
The portraits were gifted by the Robert and Martha Bolton Living Trust in memory of James D. (Don) Didier, and they now join HNOC’s permanent collection. Wall text alongside each painting explores what is known — and what remains a mystery — about the sitters and the artist himself, inviting visitors to linger and reflect.
The Williams Research Center is open Tuesday through Saturday, 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and no museum admission is required to see the portraits. It is a quiet, joyful stop in the heart of the Quarter, and a beautiful reminder of how much New Orleans history is still being recovered, one canvas at a time.
Photo: Historic New Orleans Collection, gift of the Robert and Martha Bolton Living Trust in memory of James D. (Don) Didier
