John Heywood (1735–1822) was the son of a wealthy London linen-draper, James Heywood (1687–1776) and Ann Sperling. Their eldest daughter, Anne, was the wife of Thomas Hawkins (TN22).¹ In the present portrait by Hudson, Heywood is depicted in his academic gown as a member of Trinity College, Cambridge. Heywood was admitted a Fellow Commoner of Trinity College aged twenty on 1 July 1758, listed as the son of James Heywood of London. He received his BA in 1762 and MA in 1765. The circumstances surrounding the commissioning of the portrait are revealed for the first time here in a manuscript transcription of a series of letters, in the library at Trewithen, written by James Heywood at the time the portrait was commissioned.² Collectively, these letters provide the most detailed first-hand account we have of the commissioning of a portrait by Hudson, who was at that time reaching the end of his professional career in the metropolis.

As the letters indicate, in preparation for university, James Heywood had in 1755 engaged as his son’s tutor, Mark Hiddesley (1698–1772), Bishop of Sodor and Man. During the time they spent together, the bishop took the young Heywood on a tour of the country, including visits to Durham, York and the Isle of Man. As James Heywood informed Christopher Hawkins on 22 July 1758: ‘My son is a very sober solid youth, and has applied his time well under the tuition of the worthy Bishop whose residence during his stay in London is at my house’. As a means of being thanked for tutoring Heywood’s son, Bishop Hiddesley intimated that he would accept his portrait. Accordingly, as Heywood recalled, ‘I employed Mr Hudson a famous Painter in Queen Street near Lincolns Inn Fields, to take it’.³ Over the summer of 1758 Heywood visited Cambridge with his son, John, his daughter and the bishop, during which time John’s university gown and surplice were made.⁴ On 4 October 1758, Heywood told the bishop that John was to leave London for Cambridge on the 10th of that month. He also noted: ‘My son has sat once to have his picture taken by Mr Hudson. At his return to London in December it will be finish’d. I propose to have him taken in his University habit, and shall desire you would give it a place in Bishops Court, as a testimony of all our grateful thanks for your paternal care of him’. Bishopscourt House, on the Isle of Man, was the official residence of the Bishop of Sodor and Man.

On 20 November 1758, in preparation for further sittings for the portrait, Heywood reported of his son to Bishop Hiddesley, ‘By Mr Hudson the painters desire I have told him to bring up his gown and cap’. He also requested him to invite his tutor at Cambridge to spend Christmas with them. A few months later, on 7 January 1759, Heywood told Bishop Hiddesley that the previous day he had visited Hudson with his son ‘to sit the 2nd time for his picture, and before his return he will visit him again for the last time’. He added proudly, ‘I think he has taken a great likeness of him. Mr Hudson painted Sir Isaac Newton & Mr Ray’s in Trinity College Cambridge’. Hudson’s full-length posthumous portrait of Newton (fig. 1) and of John Ray, which presumably Heywood had seen there, remain at Trinity College. Indeed, it may have been the presence at Trinity of Hudson’s portrait of Newton that prompted Heywood to employ him to paint his own son’s portrait.