However, not wanting to die far from home, he eventually made the journey back to Dublin. When he was 40 years old, Clarke was diagnosed with tuberculosis, after which he went to a sanatorium in Davos, Switzerland. Both he and his brother Walter often struggled with health problems.
Unfortunately, Harry Clarke's life was not to have a happy ending.
His stained glass often features the same strong lines found in his black-and-white book illustrations. In all, Clarke created more than 130 magnificently designed window paintings. Together with his brother Walter, he took over his father's business in 1921 after his father died. But Clarke also remained devoted to stained glass. The 80 or so illustrations Clarke produced to illustrate the Faust tale are among his best-known works and are particularly impressive for their psychedelic atmosphere. He went on to illustrate fairy tales by Charles Perrault and even Goethe's "Faust". These pictures, mostly in black and white and rich in detail, gave Clarke his final breakthrough as a book illustrator. The production of numerous pictures for eerie stories by Edgar Allan Poe, such as "The Pit and the Pendulum," gave him further opportunity to establish himself as an artist with an inimitable style. Clarke was finally more fortunate with his illustrations of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales, whose publication brought him further commissions. Margaret created several paintings depicting her husband at work.Ĭlarke's work as a book illustrator in London was not initially crowned with success: his first two commissions - illustrations for works by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Alexander Pope - were never completed, and parts of these works were ultimately irretrievably destroyed during the 1916 Easter Rising. The two married when Clarke was 25 and eventually had three children. At art school in Dublin, he met and fell in love with Margaret Crilley, a painter a few years his senior.
At the age of 21, he won his first award for his own glass art. His mother died when he was only 14 years old, which weighed heavily on him. In this way Clarke became acquainted with many art movements, but especially with Art Nouveau. Clarke's father decorated church buildings and also made ornate window panes. Irish artist Harry Clarke, who would become a leader in the Arts and Crafts movement during his lifetime, came into contact with art at an early age through the work of his father.
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