With St Patrick’s Day happening this past weekend I wanted to feature an Irish artist that fitted in with Coloricombo’s collage theme of this month. I found a wonderful artist, Harry Clarke, who was actually born on St Patrick’s Day. One might argue that stained glass is not collage but in some ways there are similarities and rules can be bent, right?
Henry Patrick Clarke (1889-1931) was an Irish artist and illustrator, and a leading figure in the Irish Arts & Crafts movement. He was a visionary stained glass artist of who the writer George Russell said was “one of the strangest geniuses of his time”.
His stained glass windows weren’t confined to religious subjects and all featured Clarke’s spectacular interpretations: Gabriel as a woman, Judas with clawed feet, pale saints, Celtic and pagan imagery and controversial depictions of alcohol, nudity and the implications of illicit encounters.
Born in Dublin, his father owned a church decorating business that included a stained glass studio. Clarke’s mother died of tuberculosis when he was just fourteen and he apprenticed at the business. His talents were obvious and he went on to study at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art where, in 1911, he won the first of three gold medals for his stained glass panels.
Clarke was also an accomplished illustrator and his first completed commission from Harrap & Co was for Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen: sixteen colour plates and more than twenty four halftone illustrations. A previous commission from the same publisher for Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner wasn’t completed with much of the work destroyed during the 1916 Easter Rising.
Between 1915 and 1918 Clarke worked on the Conan Chapel in Dublin, creating nine magnificent windows. Other commissions followed for churches throughout Ireland and England, often featuring his favourite deep blues and heavy lines which were also evident in his illustration.
When his father died in 1921, Harry and his brother took over the business and soon received a commission for St. Stephen’s cathedral in Brisbane, Australia. Already suffering from lung disease which was exacerbated by the lead and chemicals used in stained glass, the running of a business and ongoing illustration commitments were all taking their toll.
In 1926 the Irish Free State was celebrating independence and commissioned a stained glass window as a gift for the International Labour Organisation at the League of Nations in Geneva. Clarke’s design depicted scenes from Irish literature, controversially including disgraced writers such as Joyce and O’Flaherty.
This was Clarke’s last major project. By 1929 he too had been diagnosed with tuberculosis, still in negotiation with the Irish government over revisions to the window. He died in 1931 whilst making his way home from a sanatorium in Switzerland.
Clarke produced more than 130 windows in his lifetime and they can still be seen in Ireland, England, the United States and Australia. The windows for the League of Nations were still in dispute at the time of his death and they are now installed in the Wolfsonian Museum in Miami, Florida.
As I researched Clark’s glasswork and illustrations, I found it striking how much they reminded me of Aubrey Beardsley and the artist Erté. If you are interested to find out more about Clarke have a look here and here, see his illustrations here and read about the Geneva window here. There’s a video montage of his windows here.
From “The Baptism of Christ”, stained glass, Harry Clarke, 1922
Colour Combination
I picked mostly green colours from a lead glass image with exquisite detail. The colours for this week’s prompt are Kelly Green, Veridian, Lime and Russet. Use the #coloricombo colours along with any neutral light and dark colour if you wish to create an artwork in any medium and style.
Coloricombo prompts are released once a week on a Monday, and this year I also link each month with a theme. March’s theme is "Collage". If you like you can use this as topic, or create in any way as you wish, using the colours in any medium and style.
I'd love to see what you do with the coloricombo colours. If you'd like to share your work, please tag #coloricombo and #estemacleod on social media. You're also welcome to post in the private Facebook group Creative Prompts
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This is such a fresh colour palette, beautiful!