John Mudge - Life

Life

He was the fourth and youngest son of the Rev. Zachariah Mudge, by his first wife, Mary Fox, and was born at Bideford, Devon. He was educated at Bideford and Plympton grammar schools, and studied medicine at Plymouth Hospital.

Several invitations were made to Mudge to try his fortunes in London. But he preferred to remain at Plymouth, where he practised for the remainder of his life, first as surgeon, and, after 1784, when he received the degree of M.D. from King's College, Aberdeen, as a physician.

Mudge inherited a friendship with the family of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and when in 1762 Samuel Johnson accompanied Reynolds on his visit to Plymouth, Johnson became a friend and consulted Mudge as a physician. Another intimate friend was John Smeaton. Other allies and guests of Mudge were James Ferguson, the astronomer, and James Northcote, originally a chemist's assistant, who owed him his position in Reynolds's studio.

Read more about this topic:  John Mudge

Famous quotes containing the word life:

    In time, after a dozen years of centering their lives around the games boys play with one another, the boys’ bodies change and that changes everything else. But the memories are not erased of that safest time in the lives of men, when their prime concern was playing games with guys who just wanted to be their friendly competitors. Life never again gets so simple.
    Frank Pittman (20th century)

    If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.
    Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)

    He is a man of one idea: that life has a symbolic significance. Which is to say that life and art are one.
    Henry Miller (1891–1980)