harry clarke queen mab lithograph phoenix fine art

The first round of painting began in early August, the second two weeks later.ĭepicted here in intricate pencil lines and delicate shades of lemon and contrasting black, as they recline in the fantastical sunny glades of Waldron's clifftop garden, the lovers hold the scroll which would be signed, inscribed, dedicated, and dated by Clarke, September 1917, when he had completed the panels. For these and for the plain glass prologue and epilogue panels depicting the picturesque poetic swain showing the procession of 'rare and royal names' dreamed up for his own 'Queen/of all are living, or have been', he also needed three different strengths of silver stain to be specially made up so that they would fire in tones of yellow and gold. Yeats' sister, Elizabeth.īy July, Clarke had ordered a special consignment from England of the small sheets of antique flashed glass he needed to translate his designs, using more or less exactly the same scale (11 7/8 x 7 1/8 in.) into magically glowing miniatures three on blue panels, three on ruby, and one on gold pink. With the success of this first major commission assured, and the publication of his de luxe edition of Hans Anderson's Fairy Tales (1916) acclaimed, he wanted to acknowledge the encouragement of his early patron, Waldron, by illustrating a poem by an Anglo-Irish writer whom they both admired, and which had been recently published in a posthumous Cuala Press edition of Synge's 'Poems and Translations' (1909) by W.B. In March 1917, Clarke wrote to Thomas Bodkin, subsequent Director of the National Gallery of Ireland, how much he was enjoying himself on these drawings, which he embarked on as soon as he completed his last of eleven windows for the Celtic Revivalist Honan Chapel in what is now University College, Cork that same month.

They are only comparable with Clarke's coloured studies for his Geneva window, barely completed before his death in 1931. Never before documented, and in remarkably good condition in their original Clarke-inscribed mounts, these exquisitely drawn, monochromatic depictions of an unlikely assembly of legendary iconic women of the past provide a fascinating insight into the artist's working methods early in his career, and show how closely integrated were his conceptions of stained glass and book illustration at this stage. The discovery of these finely worked designs for Clarke's unique frieze of cabinet-sized stained glass panels illustrating Synge's allusively erudite, satirical love poem in praise of 'Queens' ( circa 1903), is momentous for the artist's oeuvre and for the Irish Arts and Crafts movement.

Harry clarke queen mab lithograph phoenix fine art