Harry Clarke

Harry Clarke
Born	Henry Patrick Clarke 17 March 1889 Dublin, Ireland
Died	January 6, 1931(1931-01-06) (aged 41) Chur, Switzerland
Nationality	Irish
Alma mater	Dublin Metropolitan School of Art
Known for	stained glass and book illustration
Spouse(s)	Margaret Clarke

Harry Clarke (17 March 1889 – 6 January 1931) was an Irish stained-glass artist and book illustrator. Born in Dublin, he was a leading figure in the Irish Arts and Crafts Movement.

Early life

Henry Patrick (Harry) Clarke was born 17 March 1889, younger son and third child of Joshua Clarke and Brigid Clarke (née MacGonigal).^[1] Church decorator Joshua Clarke moved to Dublin from Leeds in 1877 and started a decorating business Joshua Clarke & Sons, which later incorporated a stained glass division. Through his work with his father, Clarke was exposed to many schools of art but Art Nouveau in particular.

Clarke was educated at the Model School in Marlborough Street, Dublin and Belvedere College, which he left in 1905. He was devastated by the death of his mother in 1903, when he was only 14 years old.^{[2] [3]} Clarke was then apprenticed into his father's studio, and attended evening classes in the Metropolitan College of Art and Design. His The Consecration of St Mel, Bishop of Longford, by St Patrick won the gold medal for stained glass work in the 1910 Board of Education National Competition.^[1]

At the art school in Dublin, Clarke met fellow artist and teacher Margaret Crilley.^[1] They married on 31 October 1914 and moved into a flat at 33 North Frederick Street. They had three children, Michael, David and Ann.^[1]

Career

Illustration for The year's at the spring; an anthology of recent poetry (1920)

Book illustration

Clarke moved to London to seek work as a book illustrator. Picked up by London publisher Harrap,^[3] he started with two commissions which were never completed: Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (much of his work on which was destroyed during the 1916 Easter Rising) and an illustrated edition of Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock.^[4]

Difficulties with these projects made Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen his first printed work, in 1916. It included 16 colour plates and more than 24 halftone illustrations. This was followed by an illustrations for an edition of Edgar Allan Poe's Tales of Mystery and Imagination: the first version of that title was restricted to halftone illustrations, while a second with eight colour plates and more than 24 halftone images was published in 1923.^[4] This 1923 edition made his reputation as a book illustrator, during the golden age of gift-book illustration in the first quarter of the twentieth century. Clarke's work can be compared to that of Aubrey Beardsley, Kay Nielsen, and Edmund Dulac.

It was followed by editions of The Years at the Spring, with 12 colour plates and more than 14 monotone images; (Lettice D'O. Walters, ed., 1920), Charles Perrault's Fairy Tales of Perrault, and Goethe's Faust, with eight colour plates and more than 70 halftone and duotone images (New York: Hartsdale House,1925). The last of these is his most famous work, prefiguring the disturbing imagery of 1960s psychedelia.^[4] Two of his most sought-after titles are promotional booklets for Jameson Irish Whiskey: A History of a Great House (1924, and subsequent reprints) and Elixir of Life (1925), which was written by Geofrey Warren. His final book, Selected Poems of Algernon Charles Swinburne, was published in 1928.^[1]

Stained glass

Clarke also continued to work in stained glass, producing more than 130 windows, he and his brother Walter having taken over his father's studio after his death in 1921.^[1] His glass is distinguished by the finesse of its drawing and his use of rich colours, and an innovative integration of the window leading as part of the overall design, originally inspired by an early visit to see the stained glass of the Cathedral of Chartres. He was especially fond of deep blues. Clarke's use of heavy lines in his black-and-white book illustrations echoes his glass techniques.^[4]

Clarke's stained glass work includes many religious windows, but also much secular stained glass. Highlights of the former include the windows of the Honan Chapel in University College Cork; of the latter, a window illustrating John Keats' The Eve of St. Agnes (now in the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery in Dublin) and the Geneva Window, (now in the Wolfsonian Museum, Miami, Florida, USA).^[4] Perhaps his most seen works were the windows he made for Bewley's Café on Dublin's Grafton Street.^[1]

Later years and death

Both Harry and his brother Walter were plagued with ill health, in particular problems with their lungs.^[4] Clarke was diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1929, and went to a sanatorium in Davos, Switzerland.^[1] Fearing that he would die abroad, he began his journey back to Dublin in 1931, but died on this journey on 6 January 1931 in Chur where he is buried.^{[1] [5]}

Gallery

• 
  Clarke's illustration for Edgar Allan Poe's "The Pit and the Pendulum"
• 
  "They danced with shawls that were woven of mist and moonshine" - one of Clarke's illustrations for Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen (1916)
• 
  A Harry Clarke window depicting Saint Patrick preaching to his disciples, commissioned in 1925 for St. Michael's Church in Ballinasloe
• 
  Clarke's design drawing for the Saint Gobnait window in Honan Chapel, Cork, Ireland (1914).
• 
  Wolfsonian-FIU Museum - IMG 8218 Stained glass window by Harry Clarke (1889–1931), 1926, representing scenes from the works of 15 contemporary Irish writers.
• 
  Dingle Presentation Convent Chapel Harry Clarke Window The Baptism of Jesus

List of leaded glass windows (by Harry Clarke)

List of leaded glass windows (by The Harry Clarke Studio)

See also

• An Túr Gloine, stained glass firm with which Clarke was associated
• British and Irish stained glass (1811–1918)
• Harry Clarke - Darkness In Light
• List of people on stamps of Ireland

Further reading

• Nicola Gordon Bowe. 1994. The Life and Work of Harry Clarke (Irish Academic Press)
• Martin Moore Steenson. 2003. A Bibliographical Checklist of the Work of Harry Clarke (Books & Things)
• John J Doherty. 2003. Harry Clarke - Darkness In Light A film on the life and work of Harry Clarke (Camel Productions)
• Lucy Costigan and Michael Cullen. 2010. Strangest Genius: The Stained Glass of Harry Clarke (The History Press Ireland)

References

External links

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Harry Clarke

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Harry Clarke.

• Harry Clarke's family tree
• Works by Harry Clarke at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Harry Clarke at Internet Archive
• Harry Clarke images at 50watts.com