Kenneth Clark

This article is about the art historian, for other persons with similar names see Kenneth Clark(e) (disambiguation).

File:Kenneth Clark delivers his closing monologue in the series Civilisation.JPG

Sir Kenneth delivering his closing monologue on the television series Civilisation

Kenneth McKenzie Clark, Baron Clark of Saltwood, OM CH KCB, (July 13, 1903 – May 21, 1983) was an English author, museum director, broadcaster, and the most famous art historian of his generation.

Sir Kenneth was born in London, the only child of Kenneth MacKenzie Clark and Margaret Alice, a wealthy Scottish family with roots in the textile trade (the "Clark" in Coats & Clark threading). Sir Kenneth's grandfather had invented the cotton spool. Kenneth Clark the elder had retired in 1909 at the age of 41 to become a member of the 'idle rich' (as described by W. D. Rubinstein in The Biographical Dictionary of Life Peers).

The younger Clark was educated at Winchester College and Trinity College, Oxford, where he studied the history of art. In 1927 he married a fellow Oxford student, Elizabeth Jane Martin. The couple had three children: Alan, in 1928, and twins Colette (known as Celly) and Colin in 1932.

An admirer of Ruskin and a protégé of the most influential art critic of the time, Bernard Berenson, Sir Kenneth quickly became the British art establishment's most respected aesthetician. After a stint as fine arts curator at Oxford's Ashmolean Museum, in 1933 at age 30, Clark was appointed director of the National Gallery. He was the youngest person ever to hold the post. The following year he also became Surveyor of the King's Pictures, a post he held until 1945. He was a controversial figure however, in part due to his distaste for much of modern art. Nevertheless, he was an influential supporter of modern sculptor Henry Moore and, as Chairman of the War Artists committee, he persuaded the government not to conscript artists thus ensuring that Moore found work. In 1946 Sir Kenneth resigned his directorship in order to devote more time to writing. Between 1946 and 1950 he was Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford. He was a founding board member and also served as Chairman of the Arts Council of Great Britain and had a major role in the art program of the Festival of Britain.

Kenneth Clark was created Knight Commander of the Bath in 1938, and made a Companion of Honour in 1959. He also received the Order of Merit in 1976. In 1955 he purchased Saltwood Castle in Kent.

An indefatigable lecturer in both academic and broadcast settings, Sir Kenneth's stated goal was to make art more accessible to the masses. He was one of the founders, in 1954, of the Independent Television Authority, serving as its Chairman until 1957, when he moved to ITA's rival BBC. In 1966 he wrote and produced Civilisation for BBC television, a series on the history of Western civilisation as seen through its art. When it was broadcast on PBS in 1969, Civilization was a hit on both sides of the Atlantic, catapulting Sir Kenneth to international fame.

He was Chancellor of the University of York from 1967 to 1978 and a trustee of the British Museum. Clark was awarded a life peerage in 1969, taking the title Baron Clark of Saltwood in the County of Kent (The British satirical magazine Private Eye nicknamed him Lord Clark of Civilisation).

In 1975 he supported the campaign to create a separate Turner Gallery for the Turner Bequest (an aim still unfulfilled) and in 1980 agreed to open a symposium on Turner at the University of York, of which he had been Chancellor, but illness compelled him to back out of that commitment, which Lord Harewood undertook in his place.

His wife Jane died in 1976 and the following year Lord Clark married Nolwen de Janzé-Rice, former wife of Edward Rice, and daughter of the Count of Janzé alias Comte Frederic de Janze (a well-known French racing driver of the 1920s and 1930s) by his wife Alice Silverthorne (better known by her married names as Alice de Janze or Alice de Trafford), a wealthy American heiress resident in Kenya. Both her first husband and her father were wealthy landowners. Lord Clark died in Hythe after a short illness in 1983.

His elder son, Alan Clark, became a prominent Conservative MP and was a writer-historian.

Quotes

• "The great artist takes what he needs."
• "Opera, next to Gothic architecture, is one of the strangest inventions of Western man. It could not have been foreseen by any logical process."
• "People sometimes tell me that they prefer barbarism to civilization. I doubt if they have given it a long enough trial. Like the people of Alexandria, they are bored by civilisation; but all the evidence suggests that the boredom of barbarism is infinitely greater."
• "It is lack of confidence, more than anything else, that kills a civilisation. We can destroy ourselves by cynicism and disillusion, just as effectively as by bombs."
• "Lives devoted to Beauty seldom end well."

Books

• The Gothic Revival (1928)
• Catalogue of the Windsor Leonardo Drawings (1935)
• Leonardo da Vinci (1939)
• Piero della Francesca (1951)
• Landscape into Art (1949)
• Moments of Vision (1954), the Romanes Lecture for 1954. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• The Nude (1956)
• Looking at Pictures (1960)
• Ruskin Today (1964) (edited and annotated by)
• Rembrandt and the Italian Renaissance (1966)
• Civilisation (1969)
• Blake and Visionary Art (1973)
• Another Part of the Wood (1974) (autobiography)
• The Other Half (1977) (autobiography)
• What is a Masterpiece? (1979)
• Feminine Beauty (1980)
• The Romantic Rebellion (1986)

References

• Vital Vulgarity Sir Kenneth's role in the founding of ITV (from the Transdiffusion group of TV history websites)
• http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/message/an/localities.africa.general/435.3 – for Lord Clark's second marriage to Nolwen, and her maternal affiliation
• http://www.cousinconnect.com/d/a/11502 – for Lady Clark's mother