page_title: Henry Perlee Parker
section_title: ‘Smuggler Parker’
hierarchical_section_title: Henry Perlee Parker / ‘Smuggler Parker’
caption_attribution_description: English: Oil on canvas, 108cm x 86cm. Signed and dated 1833
context_page_description: Henry Perlee Parker was an artist who specialised in portrait and genre paintings. He made his mark in Newcastle upon Tyne in the 1820s through patronage by wealthy landowners and through paintings of large-scale events of civic pride. Over a period of forty years his work was exhibited at the Royal Academy and the British Institution in London. Coastal scenes of fisherfolk and smugglers were a popular specialism. Through the distribution and sale of mezzotint prints of subjects such as William and Grace Darling Going to the Rescue of the SS Forfarshire, Parker became one of the north-east's best-known nineteenth-century artists. In Newcastle upon Tyne he was central to the setting-up of a Northern Academy for the Arts. Later, in Sheffield, he taught drawing at the Wesleyan Proprietary Grammar School, and in his later years he lived in Hammersmith, London. He had a large family and was married three times.
context_section_description: In 1826 Shipwrecked Smugglers was exhibited at the Royal Academy, where it was purchased by Sir Matthew White Ridley, 3rd Viscount Ridley and MP for Newcastle. Its elements of melodrama, nostalgia and romanticism were careful judged so as not to offend notions of good taste. Parker returned to the similar subject matter regularly over the next thirty years: Smugglers Attacked; Smugglers Alarmed; Smugglers Playing Cards; An Affray with Smugglers; Smugglers Resting and Smugglers Quarrellin'. ‘Smuggler Parker’ became a nickname and a marketing strategy – the paintings sold well. He embraced the role – dressing as a brigand at a fancy-dress ball and telling many stories about smugglers, which ‘greatly delighted the boys in his drawing classes.'
caption: Smugglers Resting by Henry Perlee Parker, 1833.
exif: {}