James Clarke Hook R.A.

  General Notes:

James Clarke Hook (1819-1907), was a painter of coastal scenes, seascapes, and historical genre. He was one of the most famous Victorian sea painters and was an influence on such painters as Whistler.

James was born in London on the 21st of November, 1819. He was the son of James Hook, Judge Arbitrator of Sierra Leone and the second daughter of Dr. Adam Clarke (from where has second name comes).

As a boy he enjoyed his yearly expeditions from London to Northumberland by water, when he would voyage in a sailing smack. He spent his summers in Devon and Cornwall where he painted scenes of fishermen and their wives at work, and their children at play. At the time, seascapes were popular among wealthy Victorian connoisseurs.

Determined to become an artist, he set out to work for over a year in the sculpture galleries of the British Museum. In 1836 he was admitted to the Royal Academy were he worked for three years.

His first picture, called The.Hard Task, was exhibited in 1837, and represented a girl helping her sister with a lesson.

Unusual facility in portraiture and a desire to earn his own living took the student into Ireland to paint likenesses of the Waterford family and others; here he produced landscapes of the Vale of Avoca, and much developed his taste for pastoral art; later, he was similarly engaged in Kent and Somersetshire.

In 1842 his second exhibited work was a portrait of Master J. Finch Smith : in this year he gained silver medals at the Royal Academy, and in 1843 he was one of the competitors in the exhibition of cartoons in Westminster Hall, with a io by 7 ft. design of Satan in Paradise. In 1844 the Academy contained a picture of a kind with which his name was long associated, an illustration of the Decameron, called Pamphilius relating his Story, a meadow scene in bright light, with sumptuous ladies, richly clad, reclining on the grass.

The Song of Olden Times (Royal Academy, 1845) marked the artists future path distinctly in most technical respects. It was in this year Hook won the Academy gold medal for an oil picture of The Finding the Body of Harold. The travelling studentship in painting was awarded to him for Rizpah watching the Dead Sons of Saul in 1846; and he went for three years to Italy, having married Miss Rosalie Burton before he left England. Hook passed through Paris, worked diligently for some time in the Louvre, traversed Switzerland, and, though be stayed only part of three years in Italy, gained much from studies of Titian, Tintoret, Carpaccio, Mansueti and other Venetians. Their influence thenceforth dominated the coloration of his pictures, and enabled him to apply the principles to which they had attained to the representation (as Bonington before him had done) of romantic subjects and to those English themes of the land and sea with which the name of the artist is inseparably associated.

A Dream of Ancient Venice (R.A., 1848) the first fruit of these Italian studies Bayard of Brescia (R.A., 1849), Venice (B.I., 1849) and other ~crorks assured for Hook the Associateship of the Royal Academy in 1851. Soon afterwards an incomparable series of English subjects was begun, in many pastorals and fine brilliant idylls of the sea and rocks. A Rest by the Wayside and A Few Minutes to Wait before Twelve oclock proved his title to appear, in 1854, as a new and original painter. After these can~e A Signal on the Horizon(1857), A Widows Son going to Sea, The Ship-boys Letter, Childrens Children are the Crown of Old Men, A Coast-boy gathering Eggs, a scene at Lundy; the perfect Luff, Boy! (1859), about which Ruskin broke into a dithyrambic chant, The Bi-ook, Stand Clear! 0 Well for the Fishermans Boy! (186o), Leaving Cornwall for the Whitby Fishing, Sea Urchins, and a score more as fine as these.

He was elected a full Academiciaii on the 6th of March 1860, in. the place of James Ward.

He died on the I4th of April 1907.

^285,286,287

  Birth Notes:

Born at 1:30 am, 27 Northhampton Square, Middlesex, London

  Death Notes:

died at 2:20 am at Silverbeck, Churt

  Noted events in his life were:

• Baptism: Church of England, 1819 Dec 15, London, Middlesex, England. ¹⁷⁵ Baptisted by his grandfather Adam Clarke LLD; Registered in the Wesleyan Methodist register book at 66 paternoster Row, folio 75, no. 595

• Occupation: artist, 1841, Lambeth, London, England. ¹⁷⁶

• Residence: North Addington Place, 1841, Lambeth, London, England. ¹⁷⁶

• Residence: St John Holloway, 1846 Aug 13, Middlesex, England. ²⁸³

• Accomplishment: painted 'Dutch Market on A Canal', 1850.

• Accomplishment: painted 'The Defeat of Shylock', 1850.

• Accomplishment: painted 'Othello's Description of Desdemona', 1852.

• Accomplishment: painted ' The Fisherman's Good Night', 1857.

• Accomplishment: painted 'A Few Minutes Before Dinner Time', 1857.

• Accomplishment: painted 'Colin Thou Ken'st The Southern Shepherd', 1857.

• Accomplishment: painted 'Gathering Eggs From The Cliff', 1858.

• Accomplishment: painted 'From Under the Sea', 1864.

• Accomplishment: painted 'Crabbers', 1876.

• Accomplishment: painted 'Home With the Tide', 1880.

• Residence: 38A Victoria Road (Visiting), 1881, London, Middlesex, England. ²⁸⁸

• Accomplishment: painted 'Catching a Mermaid', 1883. Two boys and a girl are portrayed on rocks at the water's edge. The narrative indicates that they have discovered a wrecked ship's figurehead and, armed with ropes and a boat-hook, attempt to haul it ashore. Two of the children sit on the long boat-hook. The girl restrains the younger boy, while the older boy perches near the edge of the rocks and secures the figurehead with a rope. On their narrow platform the children provide an essential counterpoint to the sweeping seascape behind. The sentiment of the title positions the children as innocents mistaking the reality of the figurehead for a fictional mermaid. In a work designed to appeal to the emotions, even the children's innocent pleasure contains a paradox. The wooden image hints at storms and disasters in an otherwise innocuous scene, and its colour and form are reminiscent of a cadaver.

The narrative may be seen as an intonation of man's fate and the menace of the deep is implied in the precarious position of the children on a ledge of rock. The long hair of the little girl is reminiscent of the strands of seaweed dangling from the figurehead that resembles a corpse, round which the older boy ties a knot while perching with a foot on the carving. The work contrasts the human appeal of young children with the wilder elements of rocks and sea. There is also a contrast between the children, whose appearance suggests they are from the local working community, familiar with the dangers of the shore, and the ladylike dress of the 'drowned' mermaid cast up on it.

Hook was one of the most famous Victorian sea painters. His marine works often featured idealized fisher-folk and were a familiar part of the Victorian art scene. He spent his summers in Devon and Cornwall and painted numerous scenes of fishermen and their wives at work, and pictures of their children at play. Seascapes were judged as imaginative works of art and bought by wealthy Victorian connoisseurs. This painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1883 and was admired in the 'Athenaeum' of 5 May 1883; 'the glory of the picture is the sea whose waves dash themselves against the points of rocks'.

(from http://www.nmm.ac.uk/mag/pages/mnuExplore/PaintingDetail.cfm?lettera=h&ID=BHC4162&name=James%20Clark%20Hook&action=ArtistTitle)

• Accomplishment: painted 'The Stream', 1885.

• Accomplishment: painted 'Gathering Limpets', 1886.

• Accomplishment: painted 'Young Dreams', 1887.

• Accomplishment: painted 'Wreckage From the Fruiter', 1889.

• Accomplishment: painted 'The Seaweed Raker', 1889.

• Cemetery: Brookwood Cemetery, 1907. ¹⁷⁵

James married Rosalie Burton, daughter of James Burton and Anne Smith, on 1846 Aug 13 in Middlesex, England.²⁸³ (Rosalie Burton was born on 1819 Aug 17 in London, Middlesex, England ^175,288 and died on 1897 Feb 27 in Churt, Surrey, England ¹⁷⁵.)

  Marriage Notes:

They were married by license in the Parish of St. George the Martyr in the county of Middlesex.

Witnesses to the marriage were James Burton, Sarah Burton, Louisa E Burton, Mary Norooz Elizabeth Hook and A. Hook
²⁸³