Kenneth Mackenzie Clark, Baron Clark (13 July 1903 – 21 May 1983) was a British art historian, museum director, and broadcaster. After running two important art galleries in the 1930s and 1940s, he came to wider public notice on television, presenting a succession of programmes on the arts during the 1950s and 1960s, culminating in the ''
Civilisation
A civilization (or civilisation) is any complex society characterized by the development of a state, social stratification, urbanization, and symbolic systems of communication beyond natural spoken language (namely, a writing system).
Civ ...
'' series in 1969.
The son of rich parents, Clark was introduced to the arts at an early age. Among his early influences were the writings of
John Ruskin
John Ruskin (8 February 1819 20 January 1900) was an English writer, philosopher, art critic and polymath of the Victorian era. He wrote on subjects as varied as geology, architecture, myth, ornithology, literature, education, botany and pol ...
, which instilled in him the belief that everyone should have access to great art. After coming under the influence of the connoisseur and dealer
Bernard Berenson
Bernard Berenson (June 26, 1865 – October 6, 1959) was an American art historian specializing in the Renaissance. His book ''The Drawings of the Florentine Painters'' was an international success. His wife Mary is thought to have had a large ...
, Clark was appointed director of the
Ashmolean Museum
The Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology () on Beaumont Street, Oxford, England, is Britain's first public museum. Its first building was erected in 1678–1683 to house the cabinet of curiosities that Elias Ashmole gave to the University o ...
in
Oxford
Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...
aged twenty-seven, and three years later he was put in charge of Britain's
National Gallery
The National Gallery is an art museum in Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, in Central London, England. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The current Director ...
. His twelve years there saw the gallery transformed to make it accessible and inviting to a wider public. During the
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...
, when the collection was moved from London for safe keeping, Clark made the building available for a series of daily concerts which proved a celebrated morale booster during
the Blitz
The Blitz was a German bombing campaign against the United Kingdom in 1940 and 1941, during the Second World War. The term was first used by the British press and originated from the term , the German word meaning 'lightning war'.
The Germa ...
.
After the war, and three years as
Slade Professor of Fine Art at
Oxford
Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...
, Clark surprised many by accepting the chairmanship of the UK's first commercial television network. Once the service had been successfully launched he agreed to write and present programmes about the arts. These established him as a household name in Britain, and he was asked to create the first colour series about the arts, ''Civilisation'', first broadcast in 1969 in Britain and in many other countries soon afterwards.
Among many honours, Clark was
knighted
A knight is a person granted an honorary title of knighthood by a head of state (including the Pope) or representative for service to the monarch, the church or the country, especially in a military capacity. Knighthood finds origins in the G ...
at the unusually young age of thirty-five, and three decades later was made a
life peer
In the United Kingdom, life peers are appointed members of the peerage whose titles cannot be inherited, in contrast to hereditary peers. In modern times, life peerages, always created at the rank of baron, are created under the Life Peerages ...
shortly before the first transmission of ''Civilisation''. Three decades after his death, Clark was celebrated in an exhibition at
Tate Britain
Tate Britain, known from 1897 to 1932 as the National Gallery of British Art and from 1932 to 2000 as the Tate Gallery, is an art museum on Millbank in the City of Westminster in London, England. It is part of the Tate network of galleries in ...
in London, prompting a reappraisal of his career by a new generation of critics and historians. Opinions varied about his aesthetic judgment, particularly in attributing paintings to old masters, but his skill as a writer and his enthusiasm for popularising the arts were widely recognised. Both the
BBC and the Tate described him in retrospect as one of the most influential figures in British art of the twentieth century.
Life and career
Early years
Clark was born at 32
Grosvenor Square
Grosvenor Square is a large garden square in the Mayfair district of London. It is the centrepiece of the Mayfair property of the Duke of Westminster, and takes its name from the duke's surname "Grosvenor". It was developed for fashionable ...
, London, the only child of Kenneth Mackenzie Clark (1868–1932) and his wife, (Margaret) Alice, daughter of James McArthur of Manchester.
[Piper, David]
"Clark, Kenneth Mackenzie, Baron Clark (1903–1983)"
''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, 2004, retrieved 14 June 2017 The Clarks were a Scottish family who had grown rich in the textile trade. Clark's great-great-grandfather invented the cotton
spool, and the
Clark Thread Company of
Paisley had grown into a substantial business.
[ Kenneth Clark senior worked briefly as a director of the firm and retired in his mid-twenties as a member of the "idle rich", as Clark junior later put it: although "many people were richer, there can have been few who were idler".][Clark (1974), p. 1] The Clarks maintained country homes at Sudbourne Hall, Suffolk, and at Ardnamurchan
Ardnamurchan (, gd, Àird nam Murchan: headland of the great seas) is a peninsula in the ward management area of Lochaber, Highland, Scotland, noted for being very unspoiled and undisturbed. Its remoteness is accentuated by the main access ...
, Argyll, and wintered on the French Riviera.[ Kenneth senior was a sportsman, a gambler, an eccentric and a heavy drinker.][ Clark had little in common with his father, though he always remained fond of him. Alice Clark was shy and distant, but her son received affection from a devoted nanny. An only child not especially close to his parents, the young Clark had a boyhood that was often solitary, but he was generally happy. He later recalled that he used to take long walks, talking to himself, a habit he believed stood him in good stead as a broadcaster: "Television is a form of soliloquy".][Coleman, Terry. "Lord Clark", ''The Guardian'', 26 November 1977, p. 9] On a modest scale Clark senior collected pictures, and the young Kenneth was allowed to rearrange the collection. He developed a competent talent for drawing, for which he later won several prizes as a schoolboy.["Obituary: Lord Clark", ''The Times'', 23 May 1983, p. 16] When he was seven he was taken to an exhibition of Japanese art in London, which was a formative influence on his artistic tastes; he recalled, "dumb with delight, I felt that I had entered a new world".
Clark was educated at Wixenford School and, from 1917 to 1922, Winchester College
Winchester College is a public school (fee-charging independent day and boarding school) in Winchester, Hampshire, England. It was founded by William of Wykeham in 1382 and has existed in its present location ever since. It is the oldest of ...
. The latter was known for its intellectual rigour and – to Clark's dismay – enthusiasm for sports, but it also encouraged its pupils to develop interests in the arts. The headmaster, Montague Rendall, was a devotee of Italian painting and sculpture, and inspired Clark, among many others, to appreciate the works of Giotto
Giotto di Bondone (; – January 8, 1337), known mononymously as Giotto ( , ) and Latinised as Giottus, was an Italian painter and architect from Florence during the Late Middle Ages. He worked during the Gothic/ Proto-Renaissance period. G ...
, Botticelli
Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi ( – May 17, 1510), known as Sandro Botticelli (, ), was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance. Botticelli's posthumous reputation suffered until the late 19th century, when he was rediscovered ...
, Bellini and their compatriots. The school library contained the collected writings of John Ruskin
John Ruskin (8 February 1819 20 January 1900) was an English writer, philosopher, art critic and polymath of the Victorian era. He wrote on subjects as varied as geology, architecture, myth, ornithology, literature, education, botany and pol ...
, which Clark read avidly, and which influenced him for the rest of his life, not only in their artistic judgments but in their progressive political and social beliefs.
From Winchester, Clark won a scholarship to Trinity College, Oxford
(That which you wish to be secret, tell to nobody)
, named_for = The Holy Trinity
, established =
, sister_college = Churchill College, Cambridge
, president = Dame Hilary Boulding
, location = Broad Street, Oxford OX1 3BH
, coordinates ...
, where he studied modern history. He graduated in 1925 with a second-class honours degree. In the ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
The ''Dictionary of National Biography'' (''DNB'') is a standard work of reference on notable figures from British history, published since 1885. The updated ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' (''ODNB'') was published on 23 September ...
'', Sir David Piper comments that Clark had been expected to gain a first-class degree, but had not applied himself single-mindedly to his historical studies: "his interests had already turned conclusively to the study of art".[
While at Oxford, Clark was greatly impressed by the lectures of Roger Fry, the influential art critic who staged the first ]Post-Impressionism
Post-Impressionism (also spelled Postimpressionism) was a predominantly French art movement that developed roughly between 1886 and 1905, from the last Impressionist exhibition to the birth of Fauvism. Post-Impressionism emerged as a reaction ...
exhibitions in Britain. Under Fry's influence he developed an understanding of modern French painting, particularly the work of Cézanne.[Dorment, Richard]
"Kenneth Clark: Looking for Civilisation, review"
, ''The Telegraph'', 19 May 2014 Clark attracted the attention of Charles F. Bell (1871–1966), Keeper of the Fine Art Department of the Ashmolean Museum
The Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology () on Beaumont Street, Oxford, England, is Britain's first public museum. Its first building was erected in 1678–1683 to house the cabinet of curiosities that Elias Ashmole gave to the University o ...
. Bell became a mentor to him and suggested that for his B Litt thesis Clark should write about the Gothic revival
Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic, neo-Gothic, or Gothick) is an architectural movement that began in the late 1740s in England. The movement gained momentum and expanded in the first half of the 19th century, as increasingly ...
in architecture. At that time it was a deeply unfashionable subject; no serious study had been published since the nineteenth century. Although Clark's main area of study was the Renaissance
The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ide ...
, his admiration for Ruskin, the most prominent defender of the neo-Gothic style, drew him to the topic. He did not complete the thesis, but later turned his researches into his first full-length book, ''The Gothic Revival'' (1928).[ In 1925, Bell introduced Clark to ]Bernard Berenson
Bernard Berenson (June 26, 1865 – October 6, 1959) was an American art historian specializing in the Renaissance. His book ''The Drawings of the Florentine Painters'' was an international success. His wife Mary is thought to have had a large ...
, an influential scholar of the Italian Renaissance and consultant to major museums and collectors. Berenson was working on a revision of his book ''Drawings of the Florentine Painters'', and invited Clark to help. The project took two years, overlapping with Clark's studies at Oxford.
Early career
In 1929, as a result of his work with Berenson, Clark was asked to catalogue the extensive collection of Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (15 April 14522 May 1519) was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. While his fame initially rested on ...
drawings at Windsor Castle
Windsor Castle is a royal residence at Windsor in the English county of Berkshire. It is strongly associated with the English and succeeding British royal family, and embodies almost a millennium of architectural history.
The original c ...
. That year he was the joint organiser of an exhibition of Italian painting which opened at the Royal Academy on 1 January 1930. He and his co-organiser Lord Balniel
Robert Alexander Lindsay, 29th Earl of Crawford and 12th Earl of Balcarres, (born 5 March 1927), styled Lord Balniel between 1940 and 1975, is a Scottish hereditary peer and Conservative politician who was a Member of Parliament from 1955 to ...
secured masterpieces never seen before outside Italy, many of them from private collections.[_"Clark,_Sir_Kenneth_MacKenzie"_[sic](_blank)
/nowiki>.html" ;"title="ic"> "Clark, Sir Kenneth MacKenzie" [sic
/nowiki>">ic"> "Clark, Sir Kenneth MacKenzie" [sic
/nowiki> Dictionary of Art Historians, retrieved 18 June 2017 The exhibition covered Italian art "from Cimabue to Giovanni Segantini, Segantini" – from the mid-thirteenth to the late-nineteenth century. It was greeted with public and critical acclaim, and raised Clark's profile, but he came to regret the propaganda value derived from the exhibition by the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini (; 29 July 188328 April 1945) was an Italian politician and journalist who founded and led the National Fascist Party. He was Prime Minister of Italy from the March on Rome in 1922 until his deposition in ...
who had been instrumental in making so many sought-after paintings available. Several senior figures in the British art world disapproved of the exhibition; Bell was among them, but nevertheless he continued to regard Clark as his favoured successor at the Ashmolean.
Clark was not convinced that his future lay in administration; he enjoyed writing, and would have preferred to be a scholar rather than a museum director. Nonetheless, when Bell retired in 1931 Clark agreed to succeed him at the Ashmolean. Over the next two years Clark oversaw the building of an extension to the museum to provide a better space for his department. The development was made possible by an anonymous benefactor, subsequently revealed as Clark himself. A later curator of the museum wrote that Clark would be remembered for his time there, "when, with his characteristic mixture of arrogance and energy, he transformed both the collections and their display."
National Gallery
In 1933 the director of the National Gallery
The National Gallery is an art museum in Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, in Central London, England. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The current Director ...
in London, Sir Augustus Daniel, was aged sixty-seven, and due to retire at the end of the year. His assistant director, W. G. Constable, who had been in line to succeed him, had moved to the new Courtauld Institute of Art
The Courtauld Institute of Art (), commonly referred to as The Courtauld, is a self-governing college of the University of London specialising in the study of the history of art and conservation. It is among the most prestigious specialist coll ...
as its director in 1932. The historian Peter Stansky
Peter David Lyman Stansky (born January 18, 1932) is an American historian specializing in modern British history
The British Isles have witnessed intermittent periods of competition and cooperation between the people that occupy the ...
writes that behind the scenes the National Gallery "was in considerable turmoil; the staff and the trustees were in a state of continual warfare with each other." The chairman of the trustees, Lord Lee, convinced the prime minister
A prime minister, premier or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. Under those systems, a prime minister is ...
, Ramsay MacDonald
James Ramsay MacDonald (; 12 October 18669 November 1937) was a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, the first who belonged to the Labour Party, leading minority Labour governments for nine months in 1924 ...
, that Clark would be the best appointment, acceptable to the professional staff and the trustees, and able to restore harmony. When he received MacDonald's offer of the post, Clark was not enthusiastic. He thought himself too young, aged 30, and once again felt torn between a scholarly and an administrative career. He accepted the directorship, although, as he wrote to Berenson, "in between being the manager of a large department store I shall have to be a professional entertainer to the landed and official classes".At about the same time as accepting MacDonald's offer of the directorship, Clark had declined one from King George V
George V (George Frederick Ernest Albert; 3 June 1865 – 20 January 1936) was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India, from 6 May 1910 until his death in 1936.
Born during the reign of his grandmother Qu ...
's officials to succeed C. H. Collins Baker as Surveyor of the King's Pictures
The office of the Surveyor of the King's/Queen's Pictures, in the Royal Collection Department of the Royal Household of the Sovereign of the United Kingdom, is responsible for the care and maintenance of the royal collection of pictures owned by ...
. He felt that he could not do justice to the post in tandem with his new duties at the gallery. The king, determined to succeed where his staff had failed, went with Queen Mary to the National Gallery and persuaded Clark to change his mind. The appointment was announced in ''The London Gazette
''The London Gazette'' is one of the official journals of record or government gazettes of the Government of the United Kingdom, and the most important among such official journals in the United Kingdom, in which certain statutory notices are ...
'' in July 1934; Clark held the post for the next ten years.
Clark believed in making fine art accessible to everyone, and while at the National Gallery he devised many initiatives with this aim in mind. In an editorial, ''The Burlington Magazine
''The Burlington Magazine'' is a monthly publication that covers the fine and decorative arts of all periods. Established in 1903, it is the longest running art journal in the English language. It has been published by a charitable organisation si ...
'' said, "Clark put all his insight and imagination into making the National Gallery a more sympathetic place in which the visitor could enjoy a great collection of European paintings".["Kenneth Clark at 70"]
, ''The Burlington Magazine'', Vol. 115, No. 844 (July 1973), pp. 415–416 He had rooms re-hung and frames improved; by 1935 he had achieved the installation of a laboratory and introduced electric lighting, which made evening opening possible for the first time. A programme of cleaning was begun, despite sporadic sniping from those opposed in principle to cleaning old pictures;[ experimentally, the glass was removed from some pictures.][ In several years he had the gallery opened two hours earlier than usual on the day of the ]FA Cup Final
The FA Cup Final, commonly referred to in England as just the Cup Final, is the last match in the Football Association Challenge Cup. It has regularly been one of the most attended domestic football events in the world, with an official atten ...
, for the benefit of people coming to London for the match.
Clark wrote and lectured during the decade. The annotated catalogue of the royal collection of Leonardo da Vinci's drawings, on which he had begun work in 1929, was published in 1935, to highly favourable reviews; eighty years later Oxford Art Online
Oxford Art Online is an Oxford University Press online gateway into art research, which was launched in 2008. It provides access to several online art reference works, including Grove Art Online (originally published in 1996 in a print version, ''T ...
called it "a work of firm scholarship, the conclusions of which have stood the test of time".[Cast, David]
"Clark, Kenneth"
Grove Art Online, Oxford University Press, retrieved 18 June 2017 Another 1935 publication by Clark offended some in the avant-garde: an essay, published in '' The Listener'', "The Future of Painting", in which he rebuked surrealists on the one hand and abstract artists on the other for claiming to represent the future of art. He judged both as too elitist and too specialised – "the end of a period of self-consciousness, inbreeding and exhaustion". He maintained that good art must be accessible to everyone and must be rooted in the observable world. During the 1930s Clark was in demand as a lecturer, and he frequently used his research for his talks as the basis of his books. In 1936 he gave the Ryerson Lectures at Yale University
Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the w ...
; from these came his study of Leonardo, published three years later; it too, attracted much praise, at the time and subsequently.[
''The Burlington Magazine'', looking back at Clark's time at the gallery, singled out among the works acquired under his leadership the seven panels forming ]Sassetta
''For the village near Livorno, see Sassetta, Tuscany''
Stefano di Giovanni di Consolo, known as il Sassetta (ca.1392–1450 or 1451) was an Tuscan painter of the Renaissance, and a significant figure of the Sienese School.Judy Metro, ''Italia ...
's San Sepolcro Altarpiece from the fifteenth century, four works by Giovanni di Paolo from the same period, Niccolò dell'Abate's ''The Death of Eurydice'' from the sixteenth century and Ingres
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres ( , ; 29 August 1780 – 14 January 1867) was a French Neoclassical painter. Ingres was profoundly influenced by past artistic traditions and aspired to become the guardian of academic orthodoxy against the a ...
' '' Madame Moitessier'' from the nineteenth. Other important acquisitions, listed by Piper, were Rubens
Sir Peter Paul Rubens (; ; 28 June 1577 – 30 May 1640) was a Flemish artist and diplomat from the Duchy of Brabant in the Southern Netherlands (modern-day Belgium). He is considered the most influential artist of the Flemish Baroque traditio ...
's ''Watering Place'', Constable
A constable is a person holding a particular office, most commonly in criminal law enforcement. The office of constable can vary significantly in different jurisdictions. A constable is commonly the rank of an officer within the police. Other peop ...
's ''Hadleigh Castle'', Rembrandt
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (, ; 15 July 1606 – 4 October 1669), usually simply known as Rembrandt, was a Dutch Golden Age painter, printmaker and draughtsman. An innovative and prolific master in three media, he is generally cons ...
's ''Saskia as Flora'', and Poussin
Nicolas Poussin (, , ; June 1594 – 19 November 1665) was the leading painter of the classical French Baroque style, although he spent most of his working life in Rome. Most of his works were on religious and mythological subjects painted for ...
's '' The Adoration of the Golden Calf''.[
One of Clark's least successful acts as director was buying four early-sixteenth century paintings now known as '' Scenes from Tebaldeo's Eclogues''.]["Scenes from Tebaldeo's Eclogues"]
, National Gallery, retrieved 18 June 2017 He saw them in 1937 in the possession of a dealer in Vienna,[ and against the united advice of his professional staff he persuaded the trustees to buy them.][ He believed them to be by ]Giorgione
Giorgione (, , ; born Giorgio Barbarelli da Castelfranco; 1477–78 or 1473–74 – 17 September 1510) was an Italian painter of the Venetian school during the High Renaissance, who died in his thirties. He is known for the elusive poetic quali ...
, whose work was inadequately represented in the gallery at the time. The trustees authorised the expenditure of £14,000 of public funds and the paintings went on display in the gallery with considerable fanfare.[ His staff did not accept the attribution to Giorgione, and within a year scholarly research established the paintings as the work of ]Andrea Previtali
Andrea Previtali (c. 1480 –1528) was an Italian painter of the Renaissance period, active mainly in Bergamo. He was also called Andrea Cordelliaghi.
Biography
Previtali was a pupil of the painter Giovanni Bellini. In Bergamo, he painted ...
, one of Giorgione's minor contemporaries.[ The British press protested at the waste of taxpayers' money, Clark's reputation suffered a considerable blow, and his relations with his professional team, already uneasy, were further strained.][
]
Wartime
The approach of war with Germany in 1939 obliged Clark and his colleagues to consider how to protect the National Gallery's collection from bombing raids. It was agreed that all the works of art must be moved out of central London, where they were acutely vulnerable. One suggestion was to send them to Canada for safekeeping, but by this time the war had started and Clark was worried about the possibility of submarine attacks on the ships taking the collection across the Atlantic; he was not displeased when the prime minister, Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 187424 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 during the Second World War, and again from ...
, vetoed the idea: "Hide them in caves and cellars, but not one picture shall leave this island."["The Gallery in wartime"]
, The National Gallery, retrieved 18 June 2017 A disused slate mine near Blaenau Ffestiniog
Blaenau Ffestiniog is a town in Gwynedd, Wales. Once a slate mining centre in historic Merionethshire, it now relies much on tourists, drawn for instance to the Ffestiniog Railway and Llechwedd Slate Caverns. It reached a population of 12,000 ...
in north Wales was chosen as the store. To protect the paintings special storage compartments were constructed, and from careful monitoring of the collection discoveries were made about control of temperature and humidity that benefited its care and display when back in London after the war.[
With an empty gallery to preside over, Clark contemplated volunteering for the ]Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve
Royal may refer to:
People
* Royal (name), a list of people with either the surname or given name
* A member of a royal family
Places United States
* Royal, Arkansas, an unincorporated community
* Royal, Illinois, a village
* Royal, Iowa, a c ...
, but was recruited, at Lord Lee's instigation, into the newly-formed Ministry of Information, where he was put in charge of the film division, and was later promoted to be controller of home publicity. He set up the War Artists' Advisory Committee The War Artists Advisory Committee (WAAC), was a British government agency established within the Ministry of Information at the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 and headed by Sir Kenneth Clark. Its aim was to compile a comprehensive artist ...
, and persuaded the government to employ official war artists in considerable numbers. There were up to two hundred engaged under Clark's initiative. Those designated "official war artists" included Edward Ardizzone
Edward Jeffrey Irving Ardizzone, (16 October 1900 – 8 November 1979), who sometimes signed his work "DIZ", was an English painter, print-maker and war artist, and the author and illustrator of books, many of them for children. For ''Tim All ...
, Paul and John Nash, Mervyn Peake
Mervyn Laurence Peake (9 July 1911 – 17 November 1968) was an English writer, artist, poet, and illustrator. He is best known for what are usually referred to as the '' Gormenghast'' books. The four works were part of what Peake conceived ...
, John Piper and Graham Sutherland. Artists employed on short-term contracts included Jacob Epstein
Sir Jacob Epstein (10 November 1880 – 21 August 1959) was an American-British sculptor who helped pioneer modern sculpture. He was born in the United States, and moved to Europe in 1902, becoming a British subject in 1911.
He often produce ...
, Laura Knight
Dame Laura Knight ( Johnson; 4 August 1877 – 7 July 1970) was an English artist who worked in oils, watercolours, etching, engraving and drypoint. Knight was a painter in the figurative, realist tradition, who embraced English Impressi ...
, L. S. Lowry, Henry Moore
Henry Spencer Moore (30 July 1898 – 31 August 1986) was an English artist. He is best known for his semi-abstract art, abstract monumental bronze sculptures which are located around the world as public works of art. As well as sculpture, Mo ...
and Stanley Spencer
Sir Stanley Spencer, CBE RA (30 June 1891 – 14 December 1959) was an English painter. Shortly after leaving the Slade School of Art, Spencer became well known for his paintings depicting Biblical scenes occurring as if in Cookham, the sma ...
.
Although the pictures were in storage, Clark kept the National Gallery open to the public during the war, hosting a celebrated series of lunchtime and early evening concerts. They were the inspiration of the pianist Myra Hess, whose idea Clark greeted with delight, as a suitable way for the building to be "used again for its true purposes, the enjoyment of beauty." There was no advance booking, and audience members were free to eat their sandwiches and walk in or out during breaks in the performance. The concerts were an immediate and enormous success. ''The Musical Times
''The Musical Times'' is an academic journal of classical music edited and produced in the United Kingdom and currently the oldest such journal still being published in the country.
It was originally created by Joseph Mainzer in 1842 as ''Mainzer ...
'' commented, "Countless Londoners and visitors to London, civilian and service alike, came to look on the concerts as a haven of sanity in a distraught world." 1,698 concerts were given to an aggregate audience of more than 750,000 people. Clark instituted an additional public attraction of a monthly featured picture brought from storage and exhibited along with explanatory material. The institution of a "picture of the month" was retained after the war, and, at 2022, continues to the present day.
In 1945, after overseeing the return of the collections to the National Gallery, Clark resigned as director, intending to devote himself to writing. During the war years he had published little. For the gallery he wrote a slim volume about Constable's '' The Hay Wain'' (1944); from a lecture he gave in 1944 he published a short treatise on Leon Battista Alberti
Leon Battista Alberti (; 14 February 1404 – 25 April 1472) was an Italian Renaissance humanist author, artist, architect, poet, priest, linguist, philosopher, and cryptographer; he epitomised the nature of those identified now as polymaths. H ...
's ''On Painting'' (1944). The following year he contributed an introduction and notes to a volume on Florentine paintings in a series of art books published by Faber and Faber
Faber and Faber Limited, usually abbreviated to Faber, is an independent publishing house in London. Published authors and poets include T. S. Eliot (an early Faber editor and director), W. H. Auden, Margaret Storey, William Golding, Samuel ...
. The three publications totalled fewer than eighty pages between them.
Postwar
In July 1946 Clark was appointed Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford
Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...
for a three-year term. The post required him to give eight public lectures each year on the "History, Theory, and Practice of the Fine Arts". The first holder of the professorship had been Ruskin; Clark took as his first subject Ruskin's tenure of the post.[ James Stourton, Clark's authorised biographer, judges the appointment to be the most rewarding his subject ever held, and notes how, during this period, Clark established himself as Britain's most sought-after lecturer, and wrote two of his finest books, ''Landscape into Art'' (1947) and ''Piero della Francesca'' (1951).][Stourton, pp. 224–225] By this time Clark no longer hankered after a career in pure scholarship, but saw his role as sharing his knowledge and experience with the wide public.
Clark served on numerous official committees during this period, and helped to stage a ground-breaking exhibition in Paris of works by his friend and protégé Henry Moore. He was more in sympathy with modern painting and sculpture than with much of modern architecture. He admired Giles Gilbert Scott
Sir Giles Gilbert Scott (9 November 1880 – 8 February 1960) was a British architect known for his work on the New Bodleian Library, Cambridge University Library, Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, Battersea Power Station, Liverpool Cathedral, and ...
, Maxwell Fry
Edwin Maxwell Fry, CBE, RA, FRIBA, FRTPI, known as Maxwell Fry (2 August 1899 – 3 September 1987), was an English modernist architect, writer and painter.
Originally trained in the neo-classical style of architecture, Fry grew to favour th ...
, Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright (June 8, 1867 – April 9, 1959) was an American architect, designer, writer, and educator. He designed more than 1,000 structures over a creative period of 70 years. Wright played a key role in the architectural movements o ...
, Alvar Aalto
Hugo Alvar Henrik Aalto (; 3 February 1898 – 11 May 1976) was a Finnish architect and designer. His work includes architecture, furniture, textiles and glassware, as well as sculptures and paintings. He never regarded himself as an artist, s ...
and others, but found many contemporary buildings mediocre. Clark had been among the first to conclude that private patronage could no longer support the arts; during the war he had been a prominent member of the state-funded Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts. When it was reconstituted as the Arts Council of Great Britain
The Arts Council of Great Britain was a non-departmental public body dedicated to the promotion of the fine arts in Great Britain. It was divided in 1994 to form the Arts Council of England (now Arts Council England), the Scottish Arts Council ( ...
in 1945 he was invited to serve as a member of its executive committee, and as chairman of the council's arts panel.
In 1953 Clark became the Arts Council's chairman. He held the post until 1960, but it was a frustrating experience for him; he found himself chiefly a figurehead. Moreover, he was concerned that the way the council went about funding the arts was in danger of damaging the individualism of the artists whom it supported.[
]
Broadcasting: administrator, 1954–1957
The year after becoming chairman of the Arts Council, Clark surprised many and shocked some by accepting the chairmanship of the new Independent Television Authority (ITA). It had been set up by the Conservative government to introduce ITV, commercial television, funded by advertising, as a rival to the British Broadcasting Corporation #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
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. Many of those opposed to the new broadcaster feared vulgarisation on the lines of American television, and although Clark’s appointment reassured some, others thought his acceptance of the post a betrayal of artistic and intellectual standards.
Clark was no stranger to broadcasting. He had appeared on air frequently from 1936, when he gave a radio talk on an exhibition of Chinese Art at
; the following year he made his television debut, presenting Florentine paintings from the National Gallery.
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