Prior to the incomparable salmonid images created by Joseph Tomelleri that most fly fishers know, there were those of Charles Bradford Hudson. Charles Bradford Hudson — “CBH” — was born in 1865 in Ontario, Canada. He became an illustrator, author, and most especially one of the finest impressionistic landscape painters of his time. He pioneered the art of painting dioramas, featuring lifelike animals in a natural setting.
It was his work in ichthyology, though, that landed CBH in the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Working mainly at the behest of government agencies, he painted or sketched 78 images of fish in color and 80 in black and white, all completed between 1896 and 1912. (To see the array of Hudson’s artwork, consult the biographical account cited below.)
Artists’ illustrations of fish (and other organisms) were still very important to science in Hudson’s era. Black-and-white images defined the structure, general anatomy, and size of each specimen, while colored illustrations were perhaps the best and sometimes only way to fully and accurately record a specimen’s appearance.
Hudson depicted varied fish species in national and international waters,. He also illustrated several trout species of the Sierra Nevada. In the spring of 1904, Stewart Edward White wrote President Theodore Roosevelt of his concern for the golden trout, “the most beautiful and easily caught of all trout species” and one he feared could go extinct due to its limited range. Roosevelt formed a biological expedition to study this species, and Charles Bradford Hudson was hired as the expedition’s artist, accepting the job in part because he was being paid $60 per month.
In addition to painting what were thought to be two different golden trout subspecies, one of which was to be named after Roosevelt, but which turned out to be a duplicate fish of the other species, Hudson was further commissioned to paint “two native trout species” living in Lake Tahoe. As it turned out, the only trout species native to Tahoe was the Lahontan cutthroat.
In subsequent years, CBH went on to paint a McCloud River rainbow and a Kern River rainbow, as well as other salmonids, not only in California, but also in other states, particularly in New England.
There is a direct line from the work of Charles Bradford Hudson to that of Joseph Tomelleri today. When Dr. Peter Moyle’s book on California’s inland fishes came out in 2000, Phil Pister, a California Department of Fish and Game officer in the Bishop region and a dedicated fish conservationist who retired in 1990, wrote in a review of the book: “Moyle resorts to accurate and distinctive line drawings, supplemented by an assortment of Joe Tomelleri’s superb color artwork. Tomelleri is indeed a worthy successor to the legendary artist Charles Bradford Hudson. We and others have noted the similarity of CBH’s and Tomelleri’s colored illustrations of salmonid fishes.”
When asked if Hudson influenced his own work, Tomelleri replied, “I would have to say that he did not influence the technique, as we used different media, his being painted, mine being drawn. CBH used watercolor, ink, and gouache. I used solid pencil pigments, highlighted with acrylic paint. That being said, I have admired CBH’s work for many years. Dr. Robert Behnke has always spoken in glowing terms of Hudson’s paintings, and Hudson’s achievements remain a benchmark for illustrators.” Behnke was an acclaimed fisheries biologist, researcher, and author of the seminal book Trout and Salmon of North America. In 2009, a biography of Hudson was published: Victor G. Springer and Kristin A. Murphy, “Drawn to the Sea: Charles Bradford Hudson, (1865–1939), Artist, Author, Army Officer, with Special Notice of His Work for the United States Fish Commission and Bureau for the United States Fish Commission and Bureau of Fisheries,” special issue, Marine Fisheries Review 71, no. 4 (2009). You can access it at http://spo.nmfs.noaa.gov/mfr714/mfr7141.pdf.
