George Percy Jacomb-Hood

Jacomb-Hood was born on 6 July 1857 at Redhill in Surrey,^[1][2] the first son—and fourth child—of his parents.^[3][4] His father was Robert Jacomb-Hood, himself a prominent railway engineer and the Resident Engineer and later a director of the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway.^[5] His mother was Jane Jacomb-Hood (née Littlewood), and his parents had married on 25 November 1851.^[6][7] His mother died in 1869 and his father in 1900.^[8][9] His grandfather, born Robert Jacomb, had inherited an estate at Bardon Hall from a cousin, and changed his surname to "Jacomb-Hood" as a condition of the inheritance. His father sold the estate on 13 June 1864 when he was aged 6.^[10]

Jacomb-Hood was educated at Tonbridge School in 1872–73 alongside his younger brother John Wykeham Jacomb-Hood.^[11] He then won a scholarship to study at the Slade School of Fine Art, the art school of University College London.^[12] There he studied under Edward Poynter and Alphonse Legros, and then at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris under Jean-Paul Laurens.^[1][2] He won prizes while at the school.^[12] In 1895 he was recorded, alongside his brother, as a member of the Old Tonbridgians Society.^[13]

After returning from his education in France, Jacomb-Hood set up his first studio in Fulham, London.^[2] Jacomb-Hood worked as an illustrator for The Illustrated London News and also The Graphic,^[2] who gave him a number of overseas assignments,^[12] including as 'artist-correspondent' at the 1896 Summer Olympics in Athens, the first of the modern games.^[1] He was also sent on tour 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.^[12] He also painted Madeleine Shaw Lefevre in her role as principal of Somerville College, Oxford.^{[citation needed]}

He was a member of the Royal Academy of Arts between 1879 and his death, and a founding member of both the New English Art Club and the Royal Society of Portrait Painters in 1891, as well as the Royal Society of British Artists in 1884.^[1][12] He also served on the council of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers.^[12] He was awarded membership of the Royal Victorian Order (MVO) in 1912.^[1][12] He wrote an autobiography in 1925, entitled With Brush and Pencil.^[12][14] He exhibited at the first exhibition of the Society of Graphic Art in London in 1921.^[15] After 1877, he exhibited paintings and bronzes at Royal Academy of Arts, Royal Hibernian Academy, Royal Institute of Oil Painters, Royal Society of British Artists, Grosvenor Gallery, New Watercolour Society, Royal Society of Portrait Painters (after 1891^[2]), and the Salon in Paris.^[12]

Books illustrated by Jacomb-Hood include the 1892 Adrift in a Great City , the 1901 A Tale of the Dutch and the 1902 The Boy's Iliad.^[2] He was the Honorary Treasurer of the Chelsea Arts Club.^[2]

Jacomb-Hood was a close friend of Henry Scott Tuke.^[12] Jacomb-Hood married Henrietta Kemble de Hochepied-Larpent (1867–1941), daughter of Arthur de Hochepied Larpent, 8th Baron de Hochepied on 28 June 1910.^{[16][better source needed]} On their marriage, John Singer Sargent, a friend and neighbour of Jacomb-Hood's in Chelsea, gave them his watercolour Italian Sailing Vessels at Anchor (c 1904–07) inscribed "to my friend Jacomb Hood" and now at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, presented in 1943 by her sister and heiress.^[17]

Her sister, Sybil Marguerite Gonne de Hochepied-Larpent, OBE (1867–1941), known as "Reta", married Philip Napier Miles. Another sister, Clarissa Catherine de Hochepied-Larpent, married the soldier and artist Colonel Robert Charles Goff. The Jacomb-Hoods lived in Chelsea after Frank Miles's death when Jacomb-Hood's father bought Miles's house in Tite Street from his executors and also had a house in Rye, East Sussex.^{[citation needed]}

Jacomb-Hood died on 11 December 1929, aged 72, while on a visit to Alassio, Italy. At the time his address was 26 Tite Street in Chelsea, London.^[2]