Arthur Hacker, RA

(British, 1858-1919)

Portrait of Imelda Wendy Whitworth

Footnotes

Provenance
The family of the sitter, by descent.

Born on June 27, 1908, Wendy was six when she sat for the portrait at around the time of the outbreak of the Great War. Her father, Harry (1870-1930), of the family brewers Whitworth, Son & Nephew, of Wath-upon-Dearne, and mother Cicely, leased part of historic Nidd Hall near Knaresborough - home of the celebrated Mountgarret family - for a few years before the war before making a permanent move to Kilnwick Percy Hall, near Pocklington. Harry was involved with the York and Ainsty Hunt and owned racehorses, including the winner of the Ebor Handicap at York in 1922 with Iron Hand.

Wendy married her second cousin, Major Noel Lupton Whitworth (1902-1969), son of barrister Charles Warwick Whitworth and Alice Marion (nee Lupton), in 1931 and by 1934 they were living at The Grange, Staveley. Charles and Alice Whitworth later moved to The Red House, Bishop Monkton, Harrogate.

This portrait dates from the latter period of Hacker's career, a time when he was focusing increasingly on portrait commissions, earned on the back of the popularity of his varied work of the late nineteenth century. Hacker entered the Royal Academy Schools in 1876 and graduated in 1880 after which he trained at the atelier of Léon Bonnat in Paris. He first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1878 at the age of twenty, and would continue to do so until 1904. Paintings such as Pelagia and Philammon (Walker Art Gallery) and The Temptation of Sir Percival (Leeds Art Gallery), secured his reputation and ensured a continued career as a portrait painter when the desire for such subjects began to wane in the early twentieth century.