Arthur Hacker was born in London on 25 September 1858. He was the son of Edward Hacker, a line engraver specialising in animal and sporting prints (who was also for many years Registrar of Births, Marriages and Deaths for Kentish Town). Hacker entered the Royal Academy Schools for four year’s study in 1876, and then studied at Leon Bonnat’s atelier in Paris. There, among his fellow students was Stanhope Forbes, later the leading light of the Newlyn School. Like Forbes, Hacker became interested in realism, and they both were founder members of the New English Art Club. He began exhibiting at the RA at the age of 20, soon attracting public attention. At that time, his art was much influenced by French Realism, as Her Daughter’s Legacy demonstrated when shown at the Royal Academy in 1881. However, Hacker changed his style several times – after the plein air work of the early 1880s, he added a French academic style in the late 1880s, and then a variety of Pre-Raphaelite, symbolist, poetic-rustic, and simple genre figures. Hacker exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1878. He visited Spain, Gibraltar and Tangiers with Solomon Solomon around 1881, and thereafter made further visits to North Africa, the latter providing the setting for his painting Pelagia and Philammon, exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery, London, in 1887. This, and other works, established him as a serious painter, albeit a rather un-English one. In 1886 Hacker joined the newly-formed New English Art Club, but his style soon developed away, towards a more dramatic and academic treatment, often with biblical and literary subjects. In 1892 The Annunciation was purchased by the Trustees of the Chantrey Bequest. But pictures of that type were gradually losing favour, even in conservative quarters and they were despised by influential critics such as George Moore. After the turn of the century, Hacker turned to atmospheric studies of London streets. He was elected ARA in 1894 and RA in 1910. His Diploma Work was A Wet Night in Piccadilly Circus. Towards the end of his career, Hacker turned to society portraiture, as the British public’s taste for his female nudes and intense religious subjects waned. He produced portraits of Dyson Perrins, after whom the Oxford organic chemistry laboratory is named and General Sir Alfred Keogh, which until recently hung in the RAMC HQ Mess at Millbank, London. In 1894 Hacker was the subject of a bust by Edward Onslow Ford. Hacker’s wife Lilian Hacker also painted, and she exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1909-24. His King Charles’s Day was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1911. It was one of three atmospheric London street scenes that Hacker showed at that the Academy that year. The painting represented the statue of King Charles I on horseback at the southern end of Trafalgar Square. King Charles’s Day was 30 January, the day appointed within the church calendar to be observed as the day of the martyrdom of King Charles I. This small panel, probably executed swiftly on the spot, evokes the foggy atmosphere of the wintry evening and the yellow murk created by the gas-fired lamps. In an article of 1912, A L Baldry commented in The Studio: ‘These paintings of London scenes are entitled to particular consideration in any summary of his achievement, because they illustrate so well his capacity for bringing out the poetic aspects of the material he is dealing with. The example reproduced in colour – a night effect at Charing Cross – is typical in its suggestion of the atmosphere of London and in its use of the glitter and bustle of a busy street to express an artistic intention.’ Hacker died in London on 12 November 1919. His work may be found in many collections. Among his mythological pictures, The Syrinx is at Manchester, and uses a young, slightly sullen-mouthed model who appears in various other of his pictures, including The Annunciation (Tate Gallery), By the Waters of Babylon (Rochdale Art Gallery) and the excellent Temptation of Sir Percival (Leeds City Art Gallery; see above). Other works include The Cloud and the moralistic The Cloister or the World, both at Bradford, and a rather Symbolist Pelagia and Phillammon at the Walker Art Gallery. Other works may be found at: Cartwright Hall, Bradford; Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne; Brighton Art Gallery; Bromley Museum; Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge; National Museums and Galleries of Wales, Cardiff; Christ’s Hospital, Horsham; Leeds City Art Museum and the University of Leeds.