Thomas Matthews Rooke (1842,

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

– 1942, London) was a British watercolourist. He worked as a designer, as an assistant to other artists, and was commissioned by

John Ruskin John Ruskin (8 February 1819 20 January 1900) was an English writer, philosopher, art critic and polymath of the Victorian era. He wrote on subjects as varied as geology, architecture, myth, ornithology, literature, education, botany and pol ...

to make architectural drawings.

Life

Ruskin hired Rooke from Morris & Co. in 1879, and Rooke was still paid by him eight years later. In 1884 he was painting Italian architecture. Ruskin's project aimed to record threatened landscapes and buildings, and for it he also employed Frank Randal (1852–1917), and half a dozen others. Mentioned are Angelo Alessandri,

John Wharlton Bunney John Wharlton Bunney (20 June 1828 – 23 September 1882) was an English topographical and landscape artist of the nineteenth century. His father was a merchant captain whom Bunney, as a boy, accompanied on several voyages around the world. ...

, Henry Stacy Marks, Charles Fairfax Murray, and Henry Roderick Newman. In parallel Rooke was a studio assistant to

Edward Burne-Jones Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, 1st Baronet, (; 28 August, 183317 June, 1898) was a British painter and designer associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood which included Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Millais, Ford Madox Brown and Holman ...

, during the period 1868 to 1898. He also did work for Sydney Cockerell and the

Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB) (also known as Anti-Scrape) is an amenity society founded by William Morris, Philip Webb, and others in 1877 to oppose the destructive 'restoration' of ancient buildings occurring in ...

; and exhibited at the Royal Academy and

Grosvenor Gallery The Grosvenor Gallery was an art gallery in London founded in 1877 by Sir Coutts Lindsay and his wife Blanche. Its first directors were J. Comyns Carr and Charles Hallé. The gallery proved crucial to the Aesthetic Movement because it prov ...

. He contributed a painting to an 1882 book ''Bedford Park'', celebrating the then-fashionable garden suburb of that name.

Family

Rooke married Leonora Jane Jones; the wood-engraver Noel Rooke was their son.

Notes

External links

More works by Rooke
@ ArtNet
Biographical notes
@

Bonhams Bonhams is a privately owned international auction house and one of the world's oldest and largest auctioneers of fine art and antiques. It was formed by the merger in November 2001 of Bonhams & Brooks and Phillips Son & Neale. This brought to ...

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Rooke, Thomas Matthews 1842 births 1942 deaths 20th-century English painters 19th-century English painters English male painters English watercolourists English landscape painters English designers 20th-century English male artists 19th-century English male artists