A Bathing Group

Cornwall-raised Henry Tuke studied at the Slade before moving to Florence from 1880-81. There he met the English painter Arthur Lemon who worked outdoors (en plein-air) and introduced Tuke to the ideas of the French Impressionists, who believed you should paint a scene as close as how you observe it. They spent a month together in Tuscany, painting nude boys on the beach who sat for them for two pence at a time.

After a period in Paris, Tuke moved back to Cornwall in 1883 and soon befriended local boys and fishermen who became his models. Newport Beach became his workplace, where he could explore the human figure “with the pure daylight upon it, instead of the artificial lighting of the studio”. Tuke eventually built a studio at Pennance where he stayed for 40 years.

The standing figure in A Bathing Group is actually the professional Italian model Nicola Lucciani, who came from London to pose for Tuke. Although this is a domestic scene, Tuke has put Lucciani in a pose similar to those used for ancient Greek statues of gods, and paints him with a great expressiveness, his broad brush strokes mimicking the effect of the light. This idyllic scene was soon tinged with sadness, as Lucciani was killed in World War I a few years later.

As Tuke’s outdoor oil studies of men became his established subject matter, his works gathered a distinct following and have since become iconic examples of queer art from the Victorian era.