Henry Scott Tuke

The Newlyn School painter was a complex character with modest aims, yet he deserves to be regarded as one of Britain’s greatest figurative artists says STEVE PILL

- STEVE PILL

The great American painter Edward Hopper famously once said that all he ever wanted to do was “paint sunlight on the side of a house”. Born 24 years previously on 12 June 1858, the Yorkshire-born artist Henry Scott Tuke had similarly modest aims. His one over-arching ambition in life, however, was to capture the effects of sunlight on skin.

Tuke achieved this arguably more successfully than any other artist of his generation. A comprehensive new exhibition at Surrey’s Watts Gallery, titled simply Henry Scott Tuke, covers all aspects of his portfolio, yet it is his paintings of boys and young men, lounging topless on boats and rocks in the harbours of his native Cornwall, that proved a powerful calling card for both the artist’s talents and the area as a whole. “His work is very poetic and the moods he engenders captures the youth of Cornwall,” says the gallery’s new artist-in-residence, Nneka Uzoigwe [see page 29]. “When I look at his paintings, I get the feeling of an endless summer.”

The likes of 1893’s August Blue and 1902’s Ruby, Gold and Malachite weren’t simply imagined idyllic scenes, however. “As both an avid artist and sailor, Tuke sought out new and experimental ways to paint en plein air afloat on his purpose-built studio-boat,” explains Watts Gallery curator Dr Cicely Robinson. “Living in Falmouth, he amassed a fleet of small boats which he used as platforms for painting, to facilitate his quest to find colourful atmospheric effects.”