"Self Portrait" by James Clarke Hook RA, 1819-1907

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Self Portrait

James Clarke Hook, RA, 1819-1907

1895 (see McMaster 190)

Oil on canvas

H 34.5 x W 29.7 cm.

Although he is best known now for his seascapes, Hook was also a fine figure painter, and this self-portrait indicates his skill as a portraitist too, although he was rather modest about that. [Commentary continues below.]

Text by Jacqueline Banerjee; photograph kindly released on the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial licence (CC BY-NC), and downloaded from Art UK. [Click on the image to enlarge it, and mouse over the text for links.]

In her full-length study of Hook, Juliet McMaster explains that the portrait was painted, not without a good deal of prodding, for his good friend and patron Alexander Macdonald's collection of portraits and self-portraits of artists. Apparently Hook said at first, "I’m 'no go' at a portrait." But another request came from the Uffizi in Florence, so he felt he had to set to, painting a "rather formal and dourone" for the Uffizi, and then, at last, after Macdonald's death in 1884, fulfilling his friend's request: "in 1895, when he was seventy-six, he provided the portrait of himself in a beret, white beard, sidelong glance, and sea-green neckcloth.... a much more engaging image than the one he painted for the Uffizi. Hope Macdonald [Macdonald's wife] was delighted with it, and it stands alongside Millais’s self-portrait at the head of the collection" (190).

Bibliography

McMaster, Juliet. James Clarke Hook: Painter of the Sea. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2023 [Review]

Self Portrait. Art UK (note: this gives the date of the portrait as 1885). Web. 28 September 2023.

Created 28 September 2023