| Ddisgrifiad / Description | Portrait of Hugh Hughes, artist and author, born at Pwll-y-Gwichiad, Llandudno. He was educated at a school kept by his grandfather, Hugh Williams, in Glan Conwy. His mother died in 1802 and shortly after his father moved to Liverpool where Hugh Hughes learned wood engraving and oil painting.
His first known work is a portrait of John Evans, Bala (1723-1817) which was printed in Y Drysorfa, 1812. He toured Wales in 1819-1821, making sketches; the English portions (1819-1820) of his journals describing his tour were printed in 'Wales and the Welsh in Cymru'. In 1823 he published his best known work, 'The Beauties of Cambria', 60 plates. The work was put together at Glan Conwy but Hugh Hughes had already formed an aquaintance with David Charles (1762-1834) at Carmarthen and now began to publish books and magazines at that town: Yr Hynafion Cymreig, 1823-1824, Yr Addysgydd, 1823-1824, and Brut Y Cymry, 1824.
In 1827 he married Charles's daughter Sarah and they went to live in London, but in 1828 a storm broke out after he signed a petition in favour of Catholic emancipation. John Elias ordered the Jewin Calvanistic Methodist Church to excommunicate the petitioners who were amongst its members. Hughes was already a liberal, but he now became an out and out radical. He joined the Independents and published in Seren Gomer, 1828, a scathing attack upon the Calvanistic Methodist authorities and particularly upon John Elias.
He continued for a while to live, lecture and publish from London, especially upon tithes, church rates and the church establishment in general.
In 1841 he was living in Barmouth, Aberystwyth and finally in Malvern, where he died in 1863. His quite numerous publications during his later career included an edition of his father-in-law David Charles' sermons, and many pictures and caricatures, notably caricatures dealing with the Welsh Education Commission of 1846-1847.
Original Index No. B0038. |