painter and professional photographer, was born in Reading, Berkshire, son of an ironfounder, Samuel Hood, and possibly a grandson of the sketcher John Hood . He went to school in Bath and was later sent to Imperial College, Paris, where he studied drawing and painting. After completing his education he returned to England and worked for the London photographers Elliott and Fry as an artist and retoucher. Later he had his own photographic studio near London Bridge.
In 1863 Hood migrated to Adelaide, under contract to Townsend Duryea for six years as a retoucher and colourist. At the end of his indentures he married Martha Mary Hü bbe and opened his own photographic studio at Glenelg, where he remained until 1883. As well as practising photography, he painted portraits in oils and drew cartoons for papers such as the Lantern . He also taught at the Adelaide School of Design; Alfred Scott Broad and Mortimer Menpes were among his pupils. At the 1870 exhibition of the South Australian Society of Arts Hood won the prize for the best oil painting illustrative of colonial life. His 'ink portraits upon a photographic basis’ shown in the South Australian court at the 1879 Sydney International Exhibition were judged 'entirely charming’ by the Sydney Mail 's critic and 'not surpassed in the Garden Palace by anything of the same character’.
Hood moved to Sydney in 1883 in order to work as a photographer and engraver on The Picturesque Atlas of Australasia but appears to have maintained his studio in John Street, North Adelaide (presumably with one of his four sons in charge). In 1888 he opened a studio at the Glebe, Sydney, where he continued his portraiture and photographic practice as well as teaching French and restoring oil paintings. It was probably at this time that he overpainted photographic portraits taken by J. Hubert Newman . In 1895-96 the Glebe studio had become Hood & Sons. Hood ultimately worked as an ecclesiastical artist and is said to have decorated many churches throughout New South Wales. He died in Sydney on 15 May 1924, aged eighty-five.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
