The Fisherman’s Children

The Fisherman’s Children

Dundee Art Galleries & Museum: 272-1987-137

Artist: Hook, James Clarke

Date: 1879

State: 1/1

Size: 17.5 x 24.1 cm

Medium: Etching

Alternative Title(s) The Mussel Gatherers or The Mushroom Gatherers
Details Etching. Black ink on lined paper. Bottom right – in print – ‘18JHC79’. The graphite signature ‘James C. Hook’ is visible outside of the print at the bottom right. Above the signature, in remarque is a small drawing of a shell. This was likely inspired by Whistler’s adoption of the ‘butterfly’ signature so often present on his own prints.

Aberdeen Art Gallery and Museums has the original painting of this scene along with a similar etching. Both are titled The Mushroom Gatherers. In the painting the two gulls on the left are closer to the young girl.
Description Hook painted three scenes of Portsoy in August 1878; The Mushroom Gatherers, Little to Earn and Many to Keep and Tanning Nets. Both The Mushroom Gatherers and Tanning Nets are in the collection of Aberdeen Art Gallery and Museum. Little to Earn and Many to Keep is also in The McManus: Dundee Art Gallery and Museums collection.

The family first stayed at Fochabers arriving on the 8th August 1878 before visiting Lossiemouth. They took lodgings from the 12th August to the 2nd September 1878 at Miss Winter’s, High Street, Portsoy. All three paintings were exhibited in the May 1879 exhibition of the Royal Academy. For more information see Rosalie Hook, Woman Behind the Painter: Diaries of Rosalie, Mrs James Clarke Hook (ed. Juliet McMaster). Edmonton, University of Alberta Press, 2006.
 Exhibited Dundee The etching entitled The Mussel Gatherers was exhibited at the Dundee Fine Art Exhibition, Albert Institute, 1881 (Fourth Gallery, No. 826) and marked as ‘Property of J.G. Orchar, Esq.’ Dundee Fine Art Exhibition Catalogue 1881, The McManus: Dundee’s Art Gallery and Museum.
 Other Collections
  1.  Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museums, Aberdeen, UK
References
  1. Emmanuel Bénézit, Dictionary of Artists. Paris, Gründ, 2006
  2. Rodney K. Engen, Dictionary of Victorian Engravers, Print Publishers and Their Works. Cambridge, Chadwyck-Heley, 1979
  3. G.W. Friend, Index of Painters and Engravers with the titles of their work declared at the Office of the Printsellers’ Association, London, 9 James Street, Haymarket, 1894
  4. A.J. Hook, Life of James Clarke Hook, R.A. (3 Vols.) London, Butler and Tanner, Ltd., 1929-32
  5. Rosalie Hook, Woman Behind the Painter: Diaries of Rosalie, Mrs James Clarke Hook (ed. Juliet McMaster). Edmonton, University of Alberta Press, 2006
  6. Robin Spencer, ‘Whistler and James Clarke Hook’, Gazette de Beaux-Arts, July- August 1984, pp. 45-8
  7. F.G. Stephens, J. C. Hook, Royal Academician: His Life and Work, Art Annual. London, Art Journal Office, 1888
  8. Christopher Wood, Dictionary of Victorian Painters. Woodbridge, Antique Collectors Club, 1971

 

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