In addition to his achievements as a figurative painter, he was an established maritime artist and produced many portraits of sailing ships.

His father, Daniel Hack Tuke, a well-known medical doctor specialising in psychiatry, was a campaigner for humane treatment of the insane.

In 1859, the family moved to Falmouth in Cornwall where it was hoped the warmer climate would benefit Tuke's father, Daniel, who had developed symptoms of tuberculosis.

[3] During the 1880s, Tuke also met Oscar Wilde[4] and other prominent poets and writers such as John Addington Symonds, most of whom were homosexual (then usually called Uranian) and who celebrated the adolescent male.

[5] In 1883, Tuke returned to Britain and moved to Newlyn, Cornwall joining a small colony of artists including Walter Langley, Albert Chevallier Tayler and Thomas Cooper Gotch.

[7] Tuke painted oil studies of young male nudes during a tour of Italy in his early twenties in 1881, but the theme did not become central to his work until after 1885, when he had moved back to Falmouth, then still a secluded part of Cornwall and a part of the country with a very mild climate that was more agreeable for nude bathing.

There Tuke focused on maritime scenes and portraits, which showed boys and young men bathing, fishing and sunbathing on sunny beaches.

These included Edward John "Johnny" Jackett (1878–1935), Charlie Mitchell (1885–1957), who looked after Tuke's boats, Willie Sainsbury, Tuke's eldest nephew, Leo Marshall, Georgie and Richard Fouracre (sons of his housekeeper),[10] George Williams – younger son of close neighbours, Maurice Clift – nephew of a family friend, Ainsley Marks, Jack Rolling[11] (in some sources misspelt "Rowling"),[12][13] Freddy Hall, Bert White and Harry Cleave.

He produced numerous portraits of society figures, local officials and members of the Tuke family circle.

He had a strong sense of colour and excelled in the depiction of natural light, particularly the soft, fragile sunlight of the English summer.

Although Tuke often finished paintings in the studio, photographic evidence shows that he worked mainly in the open air, which accounts for their freshness of colour and the realistic effects of sunlight reflected by the sea and on the naked flesh of his models.

[19] In his early paintings, Tuke placed his male nudes in mythological contexts, but the critics found these works to be rather formal, lifeless and flaccid.

One of his best-known paintings from this period is August Blue (1893–94; Tate, London), a study of four mostly nude youths bathing from a boat.

After his death, Tuke's reputation faded, and he was largely forgotten until the 1970s, when he was rediscovered by the first generation of openly gay artists and art collectors.

He has since become something of a cult figure in gay cultural circles, with lavish editions of his paintings published and his works fetching high prices at auctions.

The papers in the Tate Archive provide context in which Tuke worked, not just the locations of his paintings and the relationships with his models, but his artistic allegiances such as his deep friendship with the painter Thomas Cooper Gotch.