Musicians, by Thomas Matthews Rooke, RWS (1842-1942). c.1891-92. Watercolour heightened with gouache. 16 x 18 inches (41 x 46 cm). Private collection, image courtesy of Sotheby's, London.
This watercolour, dating from c. 1891-92, shows the artist's brother Alfred Rooke and his family in the drawing room of their house at Park Hill, Ealing. The father Philip "Alfred" Rooke, who was two years younger than Thomas Matthews Rooke, has a violin tucked under his arm and a bow in his right hand while he stares at the sheet music he holds in his left hand. The mother, Fanny Collie, looks sideways at her husband while seated at a piano. Alfred's mother sits in a chair to the left, awaiting to listen to the musical number the family will play. The daughter, Ethel Marianne Rooke, was a student at the Royal College of Music and would have been about twenty at this time. She holds her violin in her left hand while adjusting her sheet of music. Her brother, Herbert Kerr Rooke, was a year younger than his sister. He is tuning and preparing to play his viola. The family is seated in a middle-class interior showing Aesthetic Movement overtones. T. M. Rooke's family was also musical with musical evenings held frequently at his house in Queen Anne's Gardens, his brother's family walking over the fields from Ealing to Bedford Park.
When this watercolour sold at Sotheby's in 2011 Christopher Newall explained the context: "In the foreground are seen Ethel Rooke, who in adult life became a professional musician, and her brother, Herbert Kerr Rooke, who followed a career as a marine artist and graphic designer. Seated beside the fire is Mrs. Rooke, Alfred and Thomas Matthews' Rooke's mother. As an image of family life, the watercolour speaks of a loving and harmonious relationship between the three generations present. Both branches of the Rooke family seem to have been very musical, and with a particular fondness for impromptu concerts in their various houses. The decoration of the interior – with coloured papers on the walls, blue and white plates and other decorative ceramics on display, shelves of finely bound folios, aesthetically framed drawings, and ebonised furniture, indicate that Alfred and his wife shared T.M. Rooke's aesthetic taste.
Links to Related Material
- A Music Party by Arthur Hughes
- A Music Piece [The Drawing Room], by Thomas Armstrong
- At the Piano, by James Abbot McNeill Whistler
- The Duet, by Henry Holiday
- Music, by Henry Holiday
- A Symphony, by John Melhuish Strudwick
- A Musician, by Albert Moore
- The Music Lesson, by Frederic Leighton
- The Blue Bower by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
- "Touching the Strings: Edith Martineau and Aestheticism"
Bibliography
Hartnoll, Julian. Victorian Art – Sacred & Secular, 1979, cat. 33.
Newall, Christopher. Victorian and Edwardian Art. London: Sotheby's (15 November 2011): lot 76. https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2011/victorian-edwardian-art/lot.76.html
Created 18 January 2026