Thomas Matthews Rooke

Thomas Matthews Rooke (1842, London – 1942, London) was a British watercolourist. He worked as a designer, as an assistant to other artists, and was commissioned by John Ruskin to make architectural drawings.^[1]

A Vanished Corner of Old Chiswick, 1896

The Lychgate, 1873

Life

Ruskin hired Rooke from Morris & Co. in 1879, and Rooke was still paid by him eight years later.^[2] 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.^[3][4]

In parallel Rooke was a studio assistant to Edward Burne-Jones, during the period 1868 to 1898. He also did work for Sydney Cockerell and the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings; and exhibited at the Royal Academy and Grosvenor Gallery.^[5] He contributed a painting to an 1882 book Bedford Park, celebrating the then-fashionable garden suburb of that name.^[6]

Family

Rooke married Leonora Jane Jones; the wood-engraver Noel Rooke was their son.^[7]