The elder son of John Hodgson, a Russia merchant and member of a leading family in Newcastle upon Tyne, he was born in London.
[1] Influenced by the old masters in The Hermitage collection and John Ruskin's Modern Painters, Hodgson gave up commerce for an artist's career.
He died on 19 June 1895 at The Larches, Coleshill, Buckinghamshire, where he had resided for about ten years[1] and was buried in the family grave in Highgate Cemetery.
A little later he took to historical subjects, and exhibited Sir Thomas More and his Daughters in Holbein's Studio (1861), The Return of Drake from Cadiz, 1587 (1862), The First Sight of the Armada (1863), Queen Elizabeth at Purfleet (1864), Taking Home the Bride, 1612 (1865), A Jew's Daughter accused of Witchcraft in the Middle Ages (1866), Evensong (1867), Off the Downs in the Days of the Caesars, and two domestic subjects (1868).
[1] A journey to the north of Africa in 1868 led to a change of subjects, and the first of Hodgson's oriental pictures, An Arab Story-teller, was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1869.