Beach Study Poster

This is a reproduction of Henry Scott Tuke's Beach Study of 1929. This is one of the artist's last paintings before he died. The model is Charlie Mitchell, probably one of the most loyal of Tuke's coterie of boy models which he painted in and around Falmouth, Cornwall. This is one of Tuke's plein-air oil sketches and in this work Tuke is at his most impressionistic and bold, accenting the model's long and lean back that had been strengthened by years of rowing boats in Falmouth Harbour. Henry Scott Tuke was born in 1858 York from whence he moved when he was sixteen and entered the Slade School of Art. He travelled to Italy six years later nand between 1881 and 1883 he lived in Paris where he studied under Jean-Paul Laurens and met John Singer Sargent. During this time he met Oscar Wilde and John Addington Symonds. He began his painting in Cornwall in 1883 and his fame gradually grew. In 1914 he was elected to the Royal Academy of Arts having established himself as an independant artist who could afford to work in France, Italy and the West Indies. Tuke died in Falmouth, Cornwall at the age of seventy.This painting is in a private collection.