Harry Clarke

The son of a craftsman, Joshua Clarke, Clarke the younger was exposed to art (and in particular art nouveau) at an early age. By his late teens, he was studying stained glass at the Dublin Art School[?]. While there 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.

Completing his education in his main field, Clarke travelled to London, where he sought employment as a book illustrator. Picked up by London publisher Harrap[?], he started with two commissions which were never completed: Edgar Allan Poe's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (his work on which was destroyed during the 1916 Easter Uprising) and an illustrated edition of Alexander Pope's "The Rape of the Lock".

Difficulties with these projects made Hans Christian Andersen's Andersen's Fairy Tales his first printed work, however, in 1916. This was closely followed by another illustrated version of Poe, this time Tales of Mystery and Imagination.

The latter of these made his reputation as a book illustrator, and were closely followed by editions of The Year's at the Spring (Lettice D'O. Walters[?], ed.), Charles Perrault's Fairy Tales of Perrault, and of Goethe's Faust. The last of these is perhaps his most famous work, and prefigures the disturbing imagery of 1960s psychedelia.

His final book was Selected Poems of Algernon Charles Swinburne, which was published in 1928. In the meantime, he had also been working hard in stained glass, producing more than 130 windows, he and his brother having taken over his father's studio after his death in 1921.

Unfortunately, ill health plagued both brothers, and worn down by the pace both died within a year of each other -- Harry second in early 1931, of tuberculosis while trying to recuperate in Switzerland.

Clarke's work was influenced by both the passing art nouveau and coming Art Deco movements. His stained glass was particularly informed by the French Symbolist movement.

Images of Clarke's Work

• St Wilfrid and St John Berchmans with The Presentation to our Lady of St Elisabeth in the Temple (http://www.sgm.abelgratis.com/9802f.htm)
• Five colour illustrations at ArtMagick.com (http://www.artmagick.com/artists/clarke.aspx)