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Hooke, a portrait painter from Banbridge, Co. Down, trained as a carpenter and, showing artistic ability, was encouraged by Andrew Ferguson, manager of the Sion Flax Spinning Mills, to pursue portraiture as a career. Little is known of his early years; however, he apparently received some artistic training at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution drawing school in 1843–1844, under its master, the artist Joseph Molloy. By 1844 he had established a reputation locally as an accomplished portrait painter. In the late 1850s he settled in Manchester and achieved a substantial reputation there as a painter of the city’s leading figures. A regular exhibitor at the Royal Manchester Institution from 1858, he became a member of the Manchester Academy of Fine Arts in 1861.