Portrait of Mrs Hudson

This charming portrait miniature was painted by Charlotte Brontë, the eldest of the three Brontë sisters and author of Jane Eyre. It shows Sophia Hudson, a friend of the Brontës who hosted Charlotte and her friend Ellen Nussey in 1839. This portrait was probably painted during that stay. Charlotte gave the portrait to Hudson as a gift, and it was passed on first to her niece, then to her son, before going missing in 1895. It resurfaced in 2001 at a sale in Nottingham and was bought by miniatures collector Esme Valerie Eliot, widow of the poet T. S. Eliot. In 1990 Valerie had established the Old PossumÂ’s Practical Trust, a charity to support projects in the arts, and following her death in 2012 the miniature was put up for sale through the trust.