Henry Hake

Sir Henry Mendelssohn Hake CBE FSA FRHistS (30 January 1892 – 4 April 1951) was a British museum curator who was Director of the National Portrait Gallery, London, from 1927 until his death.^[1]

He was the son of Henry Wilson Hake, Ph.D., and a grandson of Thomas Gordon Hake, a physician, poet, and friend of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, George Borrow, and others. Hake was born in London, and educated at Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge.^[2] On 2 June 1914,^[3] he became an assistant in the Department of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum.^[2]

A year after the outbreak of the First World War, on 22 August 1915, Hake was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Cambridgeshire Regiment,^[4] and was promoted to the temporary rank of lieutenant on 1 February 1916.^[5]

On 9 February 1917, he was seconded for special duty,^[6] and graded for the purposes of pay as a staff lieutenant (3rd class).^[7] On 4 June, his pay grade was raised to that of staff lieutenant (2nd class),^[8] and on 29 August he was promoted to lieutenant, with seniority from 1 June 1916.^[9] He finally returned to the Cambridgeshire Regiment on 29 July 1919.^[10]

On 24 October 1919, he received permission to wear the Croix de guerre awarded to him by France.^[11] He resigned his commission on 9 October 1920.^[12]

Hake returned to the British Museum, remaining there until he was appointed as Director, Keeper and Secretary of the National Portrait Gallery^[2] on 1 December 1927.^[13]

He was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the King's Birthday Honours of June 1933,^[14] and an Officer of the Order of Saint John on 23 December 1942.^[15] Hake was made a Knight Bachelor in the 1947 New Years Honours.^[16]

His portrait is held by the National Portrait Gallery.^[17]

Hake had married Patricia Robertson in 1920, he died at his home in London on 4 April 1951, aged 59.^[18]