Henry Scott Tuke

Henry Scott Tuke, “T.E. Lawrence as a Cadet”, 1921-22, Oil on Canvas, 42.5 x 52.7 cm, Clouds Hill Dorset, National Trust

Born in York on June 12th of 1858 into a prominent Quaker family, Henry Scott Tuke was an English visual artist, both a painter and photographer. His father was Daniel Hack Tuke, a well-known medical doctor specializing in psychiatry, who campaigned for the humane treatment of the insane. In 1859 the Tuke family moved to Falmouth, where Daniel Tuke established a practice. 

Encouraged to draw and paint from an early age, Henry Scott Tuke was enrolled in 1870 at Irwin Sharpe’s Quaker school in Weston-super-Mare, where he remained until the age of sixteen. In 1875, he enrolled at the Slade School of Art under etcher and painter Alphonse Legros and historical painter Sir Edward Poynter. Tuke won a scholarship which supported his training at the Slade and his 1880 studies in Italy. Between 1881 and 1883, he was in Paris where he met Realist movement painter Jules Bastien-Lepage, who was associated with the beginning of Naturalism. It was Bastien-Lepage who encouraged Tuke to paint en plein air, painting outdoors within the landscape.

While studying in France, Tuke decided to move to Newlyn Cornwall where many of his Parisian and Slade School friends, including painters Thomas Cooper Gotch and Albert Chevallier Tayler, had already formed the Newlyn School of painters. Attracted to the fishing village’s fantastic light, cheap living and the availability of inexpensive models, these artists were fascinated by the everyday life in the harbor and nearby villages and took this as the subject of many of their paintings.

After he exhibited his work at London’s Royal Academy of Art, Tuck received several important commissions. With his style of rough, visible brushstrokes, more impressionistic than those  of the other painters,  he distanced himself after a short time from the Newlyn School. During the 1880s, Tuke became friends with Oscar Wilde and other prominent poets and writers including  poet and cultural historian John Addington Symonds. In 1885, Tuke returned to Falmouth, a secluded part of Cornwall with a mild climate where many of his major works were produced.

In his time at Falmouth, Tuke focused on maritime scenes and portraits, earning most of his income from his work as a maritime painter. He used a converted old fishing boat as a studio and living quarters in the summer and, in winter, rented two rooms in a cottage situated between Pennance Point and Swanpool Beach. This cottage remained Tuke’s permanent base until his death. While living there, he produced his 1888-89 “All Hands to the Pumps”,  showing sailors manning the pumps during a rough sea storm; “The Sailing Lesson” in 1892; and the 1914 ship portrait “Four Masted Barque”, commissioned by its owner. 

Henry Scott Tuke became an established artist and was elected to full membership of the Royal Academy in 1914. Sometime in 1923, he visited Jamaica and Central America. There he created from 1923 to 1924 several watercolor scenes, such as “Tobacco Cay, British Honduras”. However in penetrating the interior of Belize, Tuke became ill and was forced to return home, where he never fully recovered his health.  After a long illness and suffering a heart attack in 1928, he died, a year later, in March of 1929. In his will Tuke left generous amounts of money to some of the men, who as boys, had been his models. 

Moving between Cornish-based artist colonies and the London art scene, Tuke presented a stylistic fusion of progressive en plein air paintings executed with a vivid palette and loose impressionistic handling of lighting and brushwork. Although remembered today mainly for his oil paintings of young men, Tuke, in addition to his achievements as a figurative painter, produced as many portraits of ships as he did human figures. A prolific artist, he produced over thirteen-hundred known works during his career.

Note: Among Henry Scott Tuke’s friends and models was a high school cadet, T. E. Lawrence, who later became famous as the iconic Lawrence of Arabia. In the painting “T. E. Lawrence as a Cadet”, done at Newporth Beach, near Falmouth, Tuke painted the young Lawrence getting dressed after a swim. As Lawrence was in his thirties in the early 1920s, it is most likely that this scene was composed using an earlier sketch drawn by Tuke, possibly from 1905.

Top Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Henry Scott Tuke”, Date Unknown, Vintage Print, Tate Museum, London

Second Insert Image: Henry Scott Tuke, “Jamaica”, 1924, Oil on Panel, 39.5 x 32 cm, Private Collection

Third Insert Image: Henry Scott Tuke, “The Green Waterways”, 1926, Oil on Canvas, 122 x 112 cm, Grundy Art Gallery, Blackpool, Lancashire, England

Bottom Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “William Ayers Ingram and Henry Scott Tuke, Pennance Point”, Date Unknown, Vintage Print, Tate Museum, London