Harry Clarke

At 41 years old, Harry Clarke physical status not available right now. We will update Harry Clarke's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

Career

Clarke briefly moved to London to seek work as a book illustrator. Picked up by London publisher Harrap, 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.

Clarke was commissioned by Committee of the Irish National War Memorial in 1919 to illustrate the Ireland's Memorial Records 1914-1918, a roll of honour for the 49,435 Irish who died during World War I. Illustrations for the 8 volumes were completed in 1922 and published in 1923, and a set is on display in the Irish National War Memorial Gardens. 100 copies of the book were distributed to cathedrals and libraries across Ireland and to other Allied countries. Each page features a large four-sided border of black and white illustrations by Clarke.

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.

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. It was followed by editions of The Years at the Spring, with 12 colour plates and more than 14 monotone images; (Lettice D'Oyly 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 imagery of 1960s psychedelia. 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.

Clarke produced more than 130 windows, he and his brother Walter having taken over his father's studio after his death in 1921. 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.

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, created for the Centre William Rappard in Geneva, Switzerland (now in the Wolfsonian Museum, Miami, Florida, USA). Perhaps his most seen works were the windows he made for Bewley's Café on Dublin's Grafton Street.

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