77. COLIN/ (J. C. Hook, A.)

There is a sweet feeling in this choice of landscape subject, as in most of the other works of this painter. The execution is flimsy and imperfect, and must be much bettered before his pictures can rank as works of any importance. He has, however, a very interesting figuresubject in the middle room, of which more in its place.

[A figure in a landscape, called in the catalogue" Colin thou kenst, the southerne shepheard's boye' (from Spenser's "Shepheards" Calender"). Of Mr. Hook's work in later years Ruskin wrote with increasing appreciation (see pp. 102, 228). In Modern Painters, he said that " the designs of J. C. Hook are, perhaps, the only works of the kind in existence which deserve to be mentioned in connection with the pastorals of Wordsworth and Tennyson" (vol. v. pt. ix. ch. vi. 23). In the Academy of 1871 he " found nothing deserving of notice otherwise [than in condemnation], except Mr. Hook's always pleasant sketches from fisher-life, and Mr. Pettie's graceful and powerful, though too slightly painted, study from Henry IV." (Aratru Pentelici, preface). See also Art of England, 209. Mr. Hook, born in 1819, was elected A.R.A. in 1851, R.A. in 1860. He is represented in the Tate Gallery by four pictures, Nos. 1512-1514 and 1598.]