The beach boys

After the York-born artist’s death in 1929, he became a largely forgotten figure but his work has undergone a resurgence of popularity recently and one of his last ever paintings – a semi-clad male leaning on rocks by the shore – has just fetched £30,000 at Bonhams in London.

He moved to Cornwall to become a leading light in the Newlyn School of artists and brought down models from London. But because of the cost Tuke befriended some of the local fishermen and swimmers in Falmouth. They included Charlie Mitchell, who became a favourite model. It was Mitchell who posed with his arm on the rock in Beach Study (1928) – but by this time Tuke’s work was no longer fashionable. His repetitive images of bathing boy paintings even became the subject of cartoons in the popular press.

At the same sale, an earlier work, Back of a boy bather – the unnamed model sitting shirtless by the water’s edge – went for £25,200, against an estimate of £5,000 to £7,000. The portrait was painted in or before 1890, soon after Tuke started making the study of youth and the nude outdoors his main oeuvre.

Tuke came from a prominent family of Quakers and was born in Lawrence Street, York, to Daniel Tuke and his wife Maria in 1858. His father, a physician, was a prominent campaigner for more humane treatment of the mentally ill. In this he took after his own father – Henry Tuke’s grandfather, William – who in 1796 founded The Retreat at York, the first asylum of its kind in the country.

He did so after seeing a Quaker die in the squalid and inhumane conditions of the York Asylum. With the help of the Society of Friends, he raised sufficient funds to open the Retreat on land near Heaslington. His pioneering ideas included removing inmates’ chains, housing them in a more pleasant environment, giving them decent food and trying occupational therapy. At least four members of William’s family carried on his philanthropic work.

It is perhaps unfair to remember Henry Tuke, the artist, only for his paintings of naked youth as he was undoubtedly a diverse and talented artist in a variety of subjects and media. His first commissions were portraits of family and friends, including other Quakers such as the Fox family. Among his best known portraits is that of soldier and writer TE Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia.

He was also an excellent maritime artist who could accurately depict every kind of sailing craft that visited Falmouth. After leaving York as a child and following a spell at the Slade School of Art in London, Tuke initially returned to Newlyn after the tragically early death of his only brother, William Tuke, from tuberculosis in 1883.

Although the true nature of Tuke’s close relationship with his male models in unclear it is known that he treated them with kindness and respect. He was also a friend of Oscar Wilde.