Lot 18: James Clarke Hook, R.A., H.F.R.P.E. (1819-1907)

James Clarke Hook, R.A., H.F.R.P.E. (1819-1907)
Under the Lee of a Rock
signed with monogram and dated '1874' (lower left)
oil on canvas
31¼ x 50½ in. (79.5 x 128.2 cm.)

London, Royal Academy, 1874, no. 26.

with W. W. Sampson & Son, London.

VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price and at 17.5% on the buyer's premium
James Clarke Hook exhibited for over sixty years at the Royal Academy, submitting his first picture in 1839 and his last in 1902. In 1846 he was awarded a travelling scholarship by the R.A., and spent two years in Italy, studying the Old Masters. Although Hook began by painting historical genre, in the 1850s he turned to landscape and then to the coastal scenes and seascapes for which he became famous. Praised by both Ruskin and Baudelaire, Hook's best works were characterised by rich colouring and a sensuous handling of paint.

Previously thought to be The Fishing Haven (1873), and only recently identified as Under the Lee of a Rock, the present lot represents an important rediscovery in James Clarke Hook's oeuvre. It was painted whilst Hook and his family stayed near Gwithian, Cornwall, in the summer of 1873. It was here that he produced another of his 1874 Royal Academy exhibits, Jetsam and Flotsam (Private Collection).

Under the Lee of a Rock was well received. F.G. Stephens, the art critic for the Athenaeum, wrote that the sky and sea were 'delicately and powerfully painted, and the colour of the entire work is as rich. The marvel of this picture, to compare it with others' is the painting of the captured fish - a heap of creatures just dead, of the most lovely tints, the most exquisite pearls and purest whites, the faintest and dimmest dawnings of hues so fine that one cannot say where they begin to exist, although it is obvious that they culminate superbly. The fish themselves are masterpieces of noble and graceful form, but all confused by death, and obscured in promiscuous heaps, smirched and lying in an element foreign to their uses. All these elements of beauty Mr Hook has painted, so that no one ever painted them better, and the student will not fail to enjoy the result, the more closely and carefully he examines what is really a triumph of fine handling'.

We are grateful to Juliet McMaster for her help in preparing this catalogue entry.