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Hugh Graham Belsey, MBE, (born May 1954) is a British art historian who is an authority on the art of Thomas Gainsborough. For 23 years he was the curator of Gainsborough's House in Sudbury. He is currently compiling a catalogue raisonné of Gainsborough's portraits which is scheduled for publication in 2017 by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art.
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Early life and education
Hugh Belsey was born in May 1954 in the district of Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Manchester which he followed with a post-graduate diploma in art gallery and museum studies. He earned an MLitt in fine arts from the Barber Institute, University of Birmingham, where he specialised in the Grand Tour and the collecting of George, 3rd Earl Cowper.
Career
Belsey worked at Bowood House in Wiltshire after which he became curator of Gainsborough's House in Sudbury, a position he held for 23 years. As of 2016 he is a senior research fellow at the Yale Center for British Art where he is compiling the catalogue raisonné of the portraits by Thomas Gainsborough which is scheduled for publication in 2017. He also teaches a museum course at the University of Buckingham.
Belsey was a founder member of the Constable Trust, and has served as its chairman. He was on the Council of the Association of Independent Museums for ten years.
In 2014, Belsey appeared in the BBC television series Fake or Fortune? in which he authenticated two previously unattributed works, a landscape and a portrait of Joseph Gape, as being by Thomas Gainsborough.