James Clarke Hook was an extremely successful painter, during his long, and industrious life. Unhappily his renown has not survived into the present day. I became interested in him quite by accident. Whist researching the life and work of Millais, a friend of the artist, I read that the portrait of Hook by Millais was his supreme achievement in portraiture. Rather frustratingly I have been unable to find any information about this picture there was no mention of it at the exhibition of Millais Portraits in 1999, and I have been unable to establish its whereabouts. Now to Hook himself.

James Clarke Hook was born in 1819, and studied at the RA schools, exhibiting for the first time at the Academy in 1839. In 1844 he won a Gold Medal in the competition for paintings for the new Houses of Parliament. The next year he won a travelling prize, and spent the next three years in France and Italy. On his return he commenced a series of historical genre pictures. In 1859 he made a major breakthrough with "Luff Boy!" at the RA exhibition. This set the course of his career, and from that time he concentrated on coastal scenes and seascapes. He also painted rustic scenes from time to time-I have seen one of these in a Sotheby's catalogue-it was excellent. Hook became RA in 1860. He lived in Surrey.

Obituary - The Times Tuesday April 16th 1907

Mr Hook was the son of James Hook, sometime judge of the Mixed Commission Court, Sierra Leone, and of his wife, a daughter of Dr Adam Clark, the Biblical commentator. His taste for art developed early; he was admitted to the Royal Academy school in 1836, and 9 years later won the gold medal, not, as may be supposed for landscape, but for historical painting. The next year he obtained the travelling studentship, on the strength of which he married the daughter of Mr James Burton, solicitor, and went to Italy. 

The result of his studies in Italy was seen in a long series of so-called historical pictures and illustrations of Boccaccio and Shakespeare's Italian plays; but these pictures appear to have no great merit, and have long been forgotten. It was not until the influence of the English PR had time to work upon his mind that he turned to his true field, that of landscape pictures of sea and shore. When nowadays what is called "an early Hook" comes up at auction, it is not an Othello or a Chevalier Bayard, but an English landscape, with meadows sloping to a trout stream, with trees clothing the ridges, and with cattle and a few pastoral figures. It is grey and green in colour; the foreground is careful and exact; it is steeped in sunlight and flecked with shadows. It is, in a word, of the type which was described by Richard Muther the German historian as having opened the eyes of the world 40 years ago to the depth of colouring and the enchanting life of nature, even in its individual details. But as Ruskin said in his 'notes, of 1855, the feeling of the majority of landscapes was better than the execution, which the critic was unkind enough to call 'flimsy and imperfect.' 

All at once, Hook had found his true subject. He had echoed other people as a painter of incident; he had succeeded better, but only moderately, with pure landscape; but he suddenly came into his own with pictures of the sea. To quote Ruskin again, the sea-piece of 1858 earned from the critic the high praise that "there is a familiar truth in the way he has given the deep tone of the colour of the sea, out of which the surf opens on the rocks like a great light, the snowy glare and the roar coming at the same instant" This was recognition but it was nothing to the enthusiasm which next year greeted his famous picture "Luff Boy!" a glorious picture-most glorious-"hempen bridle and horse of tree." Nat rather, backs of the blue horses, foam-flecked, rearing beside us as we ride, tossing their tameless crests, with deep drawn thunder in their overtaking tread Infinite thanks to Mr Hook for this! The public of the day was carried away not only by Mr Ruskin's rhetoric, but by the real charm of the picture; and the Academicians who had elected Hook an ARA in 1850 promoted him to full honours a few years later. 

From that time there is little to record of his life which was so regular and so successful to have been almost uninteresting. The curious thing is though for nearly 40 years after "Luff Boy!" he went on producing his pictures, and exhibiting four or five every year, and though they were nearly always of one type, he never mechanically reproduced himself or gave the impression of mannerism. There never was a worse instance of missing the point than the criticism passed, long afterwards, in one of Ruskin's Oxford lectures, where the critic declared that though "Mr Hook takes his annual lodgings as usual on the coast, the shade of the metropolis never for an instant relaxes its grasp on his imagination." In point of fact, Hook cared nothing for London and less for Society. He was no clubman; he took little part in the proceedings of the Academy; he loved the country and he lived there. So far from being a man of the world, he has been described by colleagues as having been, till the threshold of old age "a boisterous schoolboy." He prided himself on his Radicalism and his Nonconformity-probably that he might enjoy the horror of a Conservative and effectively loyal Academy. Externally the colleague with whom he had most sympathy was Millais, who was hearty, like himself, and loved the open air. The splendid portrait of him is well remembered as one of the finest of Millais's works, and as one of the glories of the English school.

Mr Hook leaves two sons, Mr Allan and Mr Bryan Hook, both of whom have practiced painting, and have often exhibited. Mrs Hook died a few years ago.


Sources:
My own research, and the bible of Victorian painting, Christopher Wood's Dictionary of Victorian Painters, published by the Antique Collectors' Club.

27/5/2003.