Artist · 33 prints
Harry Clarke Prints
About Harry Clarke
Harry Clarke was an Irish stained-glass artist and illustrator, born in Dublin on 17 March 1889 and died in Chur, Switzerland, on 6 January 1931, aged 41, while travelling home after treatment for tuberculosis. He trained in his father Joshua Clarke's church-decorating business and at evening classes at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art, and in 1914 he travelled to France to study medieval windows. He became a leading figure in the Irish Arts and Crafts movement.
His first major commission, eleven windows for the Honan Chapel at University College Cork (from 1915), is often called his finest work, and his Eve of St Agnes window, based on Keats's poem, is in the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin. As an illustrator he worked for the London publisher Harrap, producing Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales (1916), Edgar Allan Poe's Tales of Mystery and Imagination (1919) and Goethe's Faust (1925). Faust is often called his most famous book, and Harry Clarke's work in both glass and print was strongly shaped by French Symbolism.
Harry Clarke prints: reproductions of the book illustrations Irish artist Harry Clarke drew for Poe, Perrault, Hans Andersen and Alexander Pope between 1913 and the 1920s. The collection includes The Lady Madeline of Usher (1923), The Colossal Waters Rear Their Heads (1923), The Little Sea Maid (1916), Another Gown the Colour of the Moon (1922) and See Fierce Belinda on the Baron Flies.
This selection is weighted toward Edgar Allan Poe's Tales of Mystery and Imagination, with its pale, staring figures, skeletal hands and dense black backgrounds. Lighter in mood are the Perrault fairy tales, the Andersen sea maid and the Rape of the Lock drawings with Belinda and her sylphs. Most plates are fine pen and ink, some with touches of colour, covered in tiny patterned detail.
The black-and-white Poe plates suit studies, libraries and hallways, while the fairy-tale plates work in bedrooms and reading corners. All prints are museum-quality reproductions, available unframed or framed with low-glare acrylic glazing, with free shipping and import duties covered.
