His family moved to Falmouth in Cornwall in 1859, where his father practiced medicine. (His father specialised in psychiatry and campaigned for the humane treatment of the insane. His family were social activists.
Harry spent long summer days swimming and on the beach. He engaged in nude sea bathing throughout his life.
Tuke drew and painted from an early age, and trained at the Slade school and in Italy and Paris. He settled in Cornwall.
 |
| The Bathers 1888 |
 |
| Three Companions |
 |
| August Blue 1893 |
 |
| Boys Bathing 1907 |
 |
| Boys Bathing 1908 |
 |
| Boys Bathing 1912 |
 |
| Ruby Gold and Malachite 1902 |
 |
| The Bather 1924 |
More about Tuke in Wikipedia.
I first "met" Tuke in the opening passage of Charles Sprawson's book Haunts of the Black Masseur:
" I learnt to swim in India, in a pool donated to the school by the Edwardian cricketer Ranjitsinhji. I was the only English boy in the school. My father was the headmaster, and Sir K.S Ranjitsinghji, the Jam Saheb of Nawanagar, its most eminent old-boy, though he was only one prince among many there. Sometimes his successor allowed us to bathe in the flooded subterranean vaults of his palace nearby, among columns that disappeared mysteriously into black water. On the walls of the palace above there still hung Tuke's paintings of bathing boys that the Jam Saheb had collected during his cricketing years in England." (Sprawson p1-2)
No comments:
Post a Comment