As well as earning an income from the sale of his paintings, he was employed as a drawing master at the Grammar School, which allowed him to live a comfortable, if uneventful, existence.

He was an accomplished painter of architectural subjects, and showed works on a regular basis at exhibitions in Norwich, London and elsewhere.

[10] This generation, which included David Hodgson, represented a shift towards the work of the mid-Victorian artists, who were less innovatory that those of thirty years earlier.

[11] Vincent and Stark's connection with their home city was only occasionally noted, as the Norwich School was regarded at the time as being a provincial teaching centre.

[18] He attended Norwich Grammar School, where he was taught drawing by John Crome and mathematics by his father.

[20] During Hodgson's adulthood, which was relatively uneventful, he lived in one parish, St. George's Tombland, in the centre of Norwich.

His occupation necessarily limited his artistic output, but helped by the sales of his paintings, it allowed him a comfortable existence.

[25] Her father Francis Stone (1769-1835) was an architect and the surveyor for Norfolk, whose achievements included the design of the County Asylum at Thorpe St Andrew.

In 1831 they published The Picturesque Views of all the Bridges belonging to the County of Norfolk, with Hodgson's lithographs being based on Stone's drawings.

[27] Anna Maria married Alfred George Stannard, himself from a family of Norwich School painters.

[36] He is acknowledged as having made a substantial contribution to topographical lithography with his illustrations of the bridges of Norfolk (published in 1831), which were based on the drawings of his father-in-law Francis Stone.

[38][39] In Norwich, he exhibited 30 landscapes, one portrait, three figures, one still life and 75 architectural drawings, over a period of twenty years, out of a total of 114 works.

The art historian Harold Day, who along with Andrew Moore has provided a detailed account of Hodgson's life and work, praised him for his depiction of the interiors of buildings.

[36] The etchings of Henry Ninham are finer in quality,[51] and whilst Hodgson was technically accomplished, he lacked Cotman's skills and draughtsmanship.

[48] Andrew Moore described him as "a competent draughtsman and landscapist",[38] and the art historian Josephine Walpole described his The Octagon, Ely Cathedral , 1857 as an "almost incredible achievement".

[14][54] Some of his paintings now show signs of being badly affected by cracking, as do many of his generation of the artists of the Norwich School.