Arthur Hacker Portrait Paintings

A beautiful colourful Impressionistic portrait painting of a Victorian lady which dates to 1888. A rare and fine oil pastel on paper on panel in excellent condition by Arthur Hacker RA. A real quality British Impressionist painting. It is a superb portrait in a gilded oak frame of the period. Signed upper left. Provenance. South England collection. Housed in a gilded oak gallery frame 32 inches by 23 inches. Excellent condition. Arthur Hacker (1858-1919) was perhaps the most versatile of late Victorian artists and his regular and popular exhibits at the Royal Academy and New Gallery include paintings of contemporary drama, mythological and Biblical narrative, landscapes and still lifes. He also established a lucrative portrait painting practice in the early twentieth century, among his sitters being the artists Frank Short, Onslow Ford, William Goscombe John and Ernest Newton...

Available for sale from Big Sky Fine Art; this original oil painting by Arthur Hacker Davis Bell, dating from around the turn of the century. The painting is presented and supplied in a sympathetic and contrasting contemporary frame. The painted surfaces and canvas have benefitted from some restoration, cleaning and conservation, which took place in 2014 on our instructions. Some much older restoration is present. Previously with The Boydell Galleries, 4 North John Street, Liverpool. The painting is signed upper left. Arthur Hacker was perhaps the most versatile of late Victorian artists. As A.L. Baldry upholds in his critique of the artist’s work, ‘A certain disinclination to limit himself to any one type of production has always been an agreeable characteristic of Mr. Hacker’s practice as an artist. His career has been one of wholesome experiment, and has been marked by many changes in his mode of dealing with artistic problems, but it has been full, also, of eminently memorable achievement, and it has been distinguished quite definitely in all its phases’ Hacker excelled in the representation of each and every genre from historical and literary subject matter in a polished, neo‐classical style to depictions of the modern landscape in a personalised Impressionist technique. Hacker was born in London on 25th September 1858, the son of Edward Hacker the engraver. He went to the Royal Academy Schools from 1876‐1880, before studying in Paris at the atelier of Léon Bonnat (1833‐1922), an internationally famous portrait painter and close friend of Degas. He began exhibiting at the Royal Academy at the age of just 20 and attracted public acclaim. He initially excelled in classical and religious subjects and in the 1880s travelled widely in Italy, Spain, Gibraltar and North Africa collecting...