Harry Clarke
Stained Glass
And Art Illustrator

Harry Clarke was born the youngest of two sons to Joshus Clarke a craftsman on March 17, 1889. He was an Irish stained glass artist and book illustrator.

He studied stained glass at the Dublin Art School. While in school his work The consecration of St. Mel, Bishop of Longford, By St. Patrick won the gold medal for stained glass working 1910 by The Board of Education National Competition.

Upon completion of his education in stained glass work, he traveled to London where he looked for work as a book illustrator.

There he was employed by the publisher Harrap, where he worked on two commissions that were never completed. Samuel Taylor Coleridge's ' The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' (it was destroyed in the 1916 Easter Rising).

He was also working on an illustrated edition of Alexander Pope's 'The Rape of the Lock.' Because of these difficulties, his first printed work made Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Anderson.

This was followed by an illustrated edition of Edgar Allen Poe's 'Tales of Mystery and Imagination. These two made his reputation of as a book illustrator.

His work can be compared to Aubrey Beardsley, Kay Nielsen, and Edmund Dulac. These works were followed by ' The Years at the Spring of Charles Perrault's 'Fairy Tales of Perrault and Goethe's Faust.

His final book illustration was 'Selected Poems' of Algernon Charles Swinburne. In the meantime, he was also busy working on stained glass windows. In 1921, he and his brother Walter took over his father's studio when he died.

What made Harry Clarke's work so distinguishing is the finesse of his drawing, which is unusual in glass. What also set him apart is the use of rich colours especially deep blues.

His stained glass works included many religious and secular windows. An example is the windows of the Honan Chapel in the University College Cork.

The most seen was the windows of Bewley's Cafe on Dublin's Grafton Street.

As of today, The National Museum of Ireland acquired a significant piece, 'The Unhappy Judas'. It shows the Judas clothed in a robe of yellow on which the thirty pieces of silver he go for betraying Jesus is depicted.

Over him is an angelic being holding the noose that Judas hung himself with. Above all this was the scene of the burial of Judas.

This window was entered by Harry in the Board of Education's 1913 National Competition. There it was put on exhibit in the South Kensington Schools of Design.

It garnered him his third gold medal. It won first place in the Royal Dublin Society's Art Industries Exhibition that same year as well.

So when the National Museum of Ireland acquired the piece, the director Dr. Pat Wallace said, "I am delighted to have acquired this magnificent piece of Irish craftsmanship of the early 20th century which show's Clarke's genius and craft as an artist at his very best and the leading artist in the stained glass medium in his day.

It is particularly fitting that the piece should be acquired by the National Museum which partly owes its origins in the movement to encourage the highest quality in Irish art and design, spearheaded by the South Kensington Schools of Design to which the National Museum of Ireland was affiliated."