James Henry Hurdis
British artist (1800–1857)
James Henry Hurdis (1800–1857) was an amateur artist and the elder son of James Hurdis, a renowned professor of poetry. He is known for his many portraits of notable Sussex people. The cult of the Sussex Martyrs is said to have been started using Hurdis's image of Richard Woodman burning as a Protestant martyr.
Life
James Henry Hurdis was baptised on 10 July 1800 at Saint James, Cowley, Oxfordshire. When he was a year old his father died in 1801 and his mother soon married a physician named Storer Ready, from Southampton. Hurdis was educated for ten years at King Edward VI School in Southampton and afterwards spent a few years in Abbeville in France following his stepfather's bankruptcy. Following his time in France, where he fished and hunted, he was apprenticed to the engraver Charles Heath. With Heath he learnt his regard for industry and art. He also learnt how to draw and etch. Hurdis was maintained by a private fortune and with that he was able to indulge his enthusiasm for engraving.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “James Henry Hurdis” is british artist (1800–1857). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through James, Henry and Hurdis, not as a finished interpretation.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 15, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q6135908. VIAF identifies the subject as 22070144. The Library of Congress control number is nr2001025192. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1800, 1857 and 1801.
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This entry incorporates text from “James Henry Hurdis” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.