NOLA.com: Two ‘Priceless’ Paintings by Julien Hudson, Free Man of Color, On View at HNOC

“The Historic New Orleans Collection’s new paintings are especially resonant artifacts of the city’s unusual racial stratification, because the artist, Julien Hudson, was also a free man of color. He was the first professional portraitist born in New Orleans—previous artists had immigrated from elsewhere. . . There are only six signed paintings by Hudson known to exist, which makes the two paintings recently donated to the French Quarter museum almost as scarce as ivory-billed woodpeckers. Because of the social and economic inequities of the 19th century, paintings of antebellum people of African descent are extremely rare.”