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Overview
George Percy Jacomb-Hood (1857-1929) was educated at Tonbridge School and the Slade School of Fine Art, London, as well as studying while touring abroad in Paris and Madrid. This well-connected artist, who inherited an estate as a young man, married a baron's daughter, and was a member of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers, the Savile Club, was Honorary Treasurer of the Chelsea Arts Club, member of the New English Art Club and the Royal Society of Portrait Painters. He exhibited at the first exhibition of the Society of Graphic Art in London in 1921.
Jacomb-Hood regularly produced illustrations for The Graphic who gave him a number of overseas assignments. In 1896 the magazine sent him to Greece and to Delhi in 1902. He accompanied the Prince and Princess of Wales on their 1905 tour of India and was a member of George V's personal staff on his 1911 tour of India.
This early work is an illustration, published in L.H. Grindon's A history of Lancashire (1882), shows a young boy riding a horse sidesaddle along the Bridgewater canal towpath. He is driving his animal forward, encouraging it to pull the barge behind them on the Canal and is followed by an older woman. Another barge can be seen on the right, travelling in the opposite direction. Stylistically the work fits well with the socially conscious British realism of the 1870s/80s seen in the work of such artists as Frederick Walker, Hamo Thornycroft and the young George Clausen.
See: Wikipedia, 'George Percy Jacomb-Hood', https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Percy_Jacomb-Hood
Dr Mark Stocker Curator, Historical International Art April 2018