‘Youth, beautiful and daring and divine, Loved of the Gods.’1 For generations of admirers, Tuke’s boating and bathing pictures are the most enduring images of his career, and few words could better encapsulate the Arcadian sense of virtue, masculinity and purity that are represented within them. Tuke, a native of York, had studied at the Académie Julian in Paris under Jean-Paul Laurens, following years of schooling the Slade School of Art under Alphonse Legros and Sir Edward Poynter. At the Académie he became acquainted with the work of Jules Bastien-Lepage, and became well versed in the Realist movement, as well as developing an aptitude for close observation and direct representation, with an additional flare for the dramatic.
Henry Scott Tuke in his studio c.1927, Black and white print, Tate Archive, TGA 9019/1/4/1/14
Tuke's early successes as a painter were through his romanticised shipboard dramas and maritime genre scenes which culminated in the purchase of All Hands to the Pumps, 1889 (Tate) from the Royal Academy. All Hands… was executed on Tuke’s old French brigantine, the Julie of Nantes, which he had anchored in Falmouth Harbour. The composition was brought together using a number of small scale sketches of sailors and sailing boats, to which At the Capstan – on a Spanish Brig belongs. In a letter to his mother, he wrote ‘...I am just ordering a stretcher for my great pumping picture which is to be rather a big venture, about ten figures altogether. Unfortunately they come rather small, only about 2 ft. high, tho’ the picture is to be 6 ft. by 4 1/2; all this is quite contrary to your notions of my doing small pictures, but I am rather of Mr Bartlett’s opinion that “the big uns get yer name up, Tooke”.2
That year, Tuke had shared the attention at the Academy with his fellow Newlyn painters, Frank Bramley and Stanhope Forbes, whose works had both been granted a prime place on “the line” by the Hanging Committee, giving them an optimal position for viewing. Although he had originally settled alongside Forbes and Bramley in Newlyn around 1883, he broke his ties with the Colony in 1885, travelling throughout the Mediterranean and Italy; or “the land of the sun” as he called it.3 His art was deeply affected by the period spent in Italy. It was the Renaissance and classical statuary in the great collections of Florence, Naples and Rome that influenced his move to the study of the male form in the open air on his return home and the strong light of the Mediterranean translated itself into a brighter, less tonal palette.
By this time, he had all but abandoned the maritime melodramas like All hands …, in favour of pictures of local fishermen at work, boating or bathing amongst the barnacle-covered rocks and warm shallow pools along the coast. Increasingly his subjects became younger and more energetic, culminating in his second triumph at the Royal Academy in 1894 when his painting, August Blue (Tate), was purchased for the nation. In this exceptional work he secured, not only his position as a significant Modern Realist, but also his resolution to explore his idealised chosen subject matter in the seclusion of Cornwall.
Numerous local models were used in Tuke’s compositions, staged in the sunshine of the area. An example of this is Keeping Her Off, which features Georgie Fouracre, the elder son of Tuke’s housekeeper at Pennance Cottage where he rented rooms, alongside the younger model, Georgie Williams, who also lived locally. Both were used in numerous other compositions including Summer Evening (Private Collection) and To the Morning Sun, 1904 (Hugh Lane Gallery Collection).
In stark contrast with the capital, Falmouth offered itself to Tuke as a bucolic idyll away from the grime and strain of city life. His new home was a place with ‘the most exquisite imaginable of views’, and dead calm seas upon which danced a ‘gleaming sun most of the day’.4
He specifically described Newporth Beach, his principal seat of operations, as a ‘truly enchanted spot’,5 and one that would reoccur in his pictures for the rest of his career. The chief beauty of the beaches surrounding Falmouth lay in their shallow waters; a film of blues and greens in various hues, ranging from turquoise to ultramarine, through which the undulations of the seabed are revealed as they slip further into the tranquil depths. It was here, in this ‘out of doors’ studio that Tuke began the first of his ‘bather’ pictures, resulting in his first ambitious composition of August Blue, and of which Summer Dreams remains one of his last.
Summer Dreams is the superlative work and, as the last major bathing subject by the artist to leave his studio, having been kept safe there for a decade as a consummate example of his skill and the pursuit of beauty, there can be but only a few paintings of this calibre in private hands today. In his bathers and swimmers, Tuke found simplicity. Leaving behind his historicised, over-elaborate compositions, the posed figure draped only in brilliant summer sunlight became his key focus when painting en plein air:
‘I paint all my pictures in the open air. Of course, at times I repaint portions of them here, [in the studio] because the harmony that looks alright beside the sunlit model may look very different when inspected critically in the studio next day ... ’ 6
Tuke used his boating and bathing subjects as a device to explore the effects of light and atmosphere on the body as a means of producing brilliant colours that ultimately provide the language of experience he is attempting to recreate. By and large, Tuke’s later works are devoid of narrative which differentiated him from his Cornish counterparts.
Whist many of the young artists who also found their way to Cornwall following their studies in Europe maintained a separation from their native subjects, Tuke was able to
assimilate himself into the local population. This is perhaps down to his affinity with the sea as well as being a keen and passionate sailor himself. Tom Cross has written that ‘In appearance Tuke was not unlike a sailor – sturdy, broad-shouldered, with dark hair and moustache, a suspicion of a sea roll in his walk and a watchful manner.’7 This familiarity, and at times a sense fraternity, provides Tuke’s paintings with an encompassing feeling of ease in his subjects as they spend their time whiling away the hours in the perpetual summer that his canvases exhibit.
Henry Scott Tuke on the beach painting ‘The Embarcation’ 1914, c.1911–14, Colour transparency, Tate Archive, TGA 9019/1/4/1/10
This familiarity also provides a high degree of naturalism. For a time, he attempted works along mythological and classical compositions which were more in line with the fashion for historical narrative at the Royal Academy, but these were poorly received, and many were destroyed by the artist. Instead, he opted to illustrate his models as a vehicle for encapsulating youthful masculinity. He disregards Classical or Romantic mythologies as his starting point, no longer wrapping his subjects up with God-like qualities, instead representing them more as the classic Kouros; a representation of the glory of the human spirit. As a result of this change Tuke no longer attempted titles such as Hermes at the Pool or Endymion, opting instead for names which were more arbitrary and simply illustrative of the leisure activity they depicted the model in.
In an interview taken many years after the painting, Tom White, the model for Summer Dreams, recalled how the painting came about one day on Newporth Beach: ‘I had probably been on night duty, and was tired. Tuke said to me “Do you think you could get in that position again? You were sound asleep!” and Summer Dreams was born. The picture was in his studio between exhibitions, and travelled all over the world. He was loath to part with it, and never did.’8 The work remained in Tuke’s studio until his death in 1929.
1 The first line of a poem attributed to Henry Scott Tuke published in The Artist in 1889.
2 Letter dated 27 September 1888. See: Maria Tuke Sainsbury, Henry Scott Tuke R.A., R.W.S.: A Memoir, London, 1933. p. 86.
3 Catherine Wallace, Catching the Light: The Art and Life of Henry Scott Tuke, Edinburgh: Atelier Books, 2008. p. 65.
4 Maria Tuke Sainsbury, Henry Scott Tuke R.A., R.W.S.: A Memoir, London, 1933. p. 76.
5 Ibid, p. 76.
6 E. Bonney Steyne, Afternoon in Studios: Henry Scott Tuke at Falmouth, Studio 5, 1895. p. 93.
7 Tom Cross, The Shining Sands: Artists in Newlyn and St. Ives, 1880-1930. Westcountry Books, 1994.
8 Brian D. Price, (ed.), Tuke Reminiscences, Falmouth, 1983. p. 67.
A fully illustrated catalogue for our summer exhibition of British Impressionism is available to buy online and from our gallery in St. James's
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