Henry Scott Tuke was without doubt one of the most accomplished and admired artists ever to be associated with Cornwall.
He lived in Falmouth for 45 years until his death in 1929. Although a noted maritime artist, he became best known for his paintings of nude boys and young men, modelling on his boat and local beaches.
A book about his life published by Gay Men’s News in 1988 majored on this aspect of his work. It caused quite a stir when it was controversially reviewed in the Falmouth Packet, with the ensuing debate ultimately being “settled” from an unlikely quarter.
A few weeks after its review, the Packet reported that it had led to “ripples of indignation far and wide.”
The paper’s Pendennis columnist wrote: “Our review dared to speculate on the possibility that Tuke was motivated in his work by more than a purely artistic obsession.
“Bachelor Tuke . . . hired local lads as models in his floating studio, a brigantine moored off Greenbank.
“He was an excellent artist who was elected to the Royal Academy, but his recurrent theme – nude youths in seaside settings – did make people wonder about him at the time. The fact that Oscar Wilde was a pal of his didn’t help matters, either.”
The Packet’s review mentioned this speculation without offering any firm conclusions but, as Pendennis put it: “The din of indignant Tuke supporters made our windows rattle.”
Among the review’s readers was Mrs Owen Thurston, an elderly woman in Somerset, who jumped to Tuke’s defence in a manner that brooked no argument.
“Tuke was in love with my mother,” she wrote in a letter to the editor, “and only settled for bachelorhood after she spurned his entreaties and married my father. So any suggestion that he was homosexual is nonsense!”
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