page_title: Henry Perlee Parker
section_title: The Business of Art
hierarchical_section_title: Henry Perlee Parker / The Business of Art
caption_attribution_description: English: digital photograph of mezzotint print
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: Throughout these enterprises Parker remained a prolific portrait painter with an eye to maximising his income. Brandling's successor as MP for Northumberland, Matthew Bell (1793–1871), commissioned a portrait:  ‘The picture is to be engraved by subscription, and will afford many of the friends of Mr. Bell an opportunity of paying a compliment to the local usefulness and private worth of the individual, by placing their names on the list which hangs beside the painting.’ On March 1832 the mayoress of Newcastle gave a grand ball and supper to mark the coronation of William IV. This came ‘from a laudable desire to serve the tradesmen who had all suffered in some degree from the previous visitation (cholera) it was resolved that this should be a fancy, as well as a dress ball … There were between 500 and 600 persons present … Mr. Henry Perlee Parker, artist of Newcastle, is at present engaged in painting a picture of this grand fancy dress ball.’ The painting was purchased by the mayor. A portrait of Reverend Robert Morrison (1782–1834), the first Christian Protestant missionary in China, was presented to the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle upon Tyne in 1833.
  Sales of mezzotint prints of Parker's work became increasing important to his finances, and in 1833, Danger was his first painting to be purchased by Ackermann's of London for reproduction and publishing. Ackermann's print shop in Regent Street, London, was advertised as having "the largest collection of exhibition prints and of London always on view: from 1s. to 21s. plain and coloured". As publishers, Ackermann's were leaders in the field of selling multi-coloured lithographic images.' Perhaps through the influence of Ackermann's, Parker would start to appreciate the importance of a good title – Looking Out  (‘a resolute smuggler, leaning out of a porthole’) and Looking In (‘a weather-beaten sailor, in a similar position, reading the Naval Gazette) would become two of his best-known Ackermann prints. The Banquet Given on the Occasion of the Opening of the Grainger Market, Newcastle upon Tyne, 1835 was another large commemorative picture containing many portraits of local dignitaries, such as John Dobson, Richard Grainger, John Clayton (the town clerk)  and John L. Hood (the mayor).
caption: Looking Out mezzotint print by William Overend Geller after Henry Perlee Parker. Published by Ackermann's of London, 1836
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