Hacker was one of the many late Victorian artists who found that the literary and historical figure subjects that they had painted during their early careers suddenly went out of fashion around the turn of the century. Like others faced with the same predicament, he turned to painting portraits, but he also developed a line in atmospheric street scenes by night. The best-known example is A Wet Night at Piccadilly Circus, his Royal Academy diploma work of 1910. When this was shown in the Impressionism in Britain exhibition at the Barbican last year (no.94), Kenneth McConkey wrote in the catalogue: 'It is almost as though this establishment figure, now in his fifties, wished to reclaim some of the radicalism of his student years ... Critics were supportive of [the] development, recognising Turneresque, if not Impressionist, qualities in the handling.'