Joseph Clark (painter)

Joseph Clark (4 July 1834 – 4 July 1926) was an English oil painter, well known in the Victorian era for his domestic scenes, especially of children.

For other men of the same name, see Joseph Clark (disambiguation).
Joseph Clark

ROI
Clark's "Three little kittens", 1883
Born4 July 1834
Cerne Abbas, Dorset, England
Died4 July 1926(1926-07-04) (aged 92)
Thanet, Kent, England
NationalityEnglish
EducationJ. M. Leigh's Art School
Known forPainting
Notable work
domestic scenes
Spouse(s)Annie Jones

Life
Clark's "A sick child", 1857

Born in 1834 in Cerne Abbas, Dorset,[1] from the age of eleven Clark was educated as a boarder by William Barnes at his school in Dorchester, and according to a study of the school "exploited Barnes's training perhaps more successfully than any other pupil".[2][3]

His parents brought Clark up as a member of the Swedenborgian New Church, and he remained a member all his life.[3] By 1851, Clark's father had died, and he was living at 13, Long Street, Cerne Abbas, with his widowed mother, who was a retired draper, and two older unmarried sisters, Mary and Emma.[4] He went on to train at J. M. Leigh's art school and became a successful artist at an early age, exhibiting at the Royal Academy between 1857 and 1904. Victorian Painters sums him up as a "painter of domestic genre of a tender and affecting nature, usually of children and a few biblical subjects".[5] He was elected a Member of the Institute of Oil Painters,[1] which had a membership limited to one hundred.[6] Some of his paintings were named in the Dorset dialect,[3] in which his schoolmaster William Barnes wrote poetry.[7] "Jeanes Wedden Day in Mornen", which is also the title of a poem by Barnes,[8] is an example of this.[3]

“Christmas morning”

In 1868, at Winchester, Clark married Annie Jones, a daughter of John Jones, of Winchester, and they went on to have one son and three daughters.[1][9] He was also the uncle of another artist, Joseph Benwell Clark.[5]

Clark died in Thanet, Kent, on 4 July 1926, his 92nd birthday.[1][10]

Notes
  1. "Clark, Joseph, (4 July 1834–4 July 1926)", in Who Was Who 1916–1928 (1992 reprint, ISBN 0-7136-3143-0): "Member of Institute of Oil Painters, Born Cerne Abbas, Dorsetshire, 4 July 1834; m 1868, d of John Jones, Winchester; one s three d; died 4 July 1926"
  2. T. W. Hearl, William Barnes, 1801–1886, the Schoolmaster: A Study of Education in the Life and Work of the Dorset Poet (Friary Press, 1966), p. 205: "Joseph Clark, who came from Cerne Abbas to join the school as a boarder of 11 , in 1845 or early 1846 , exploited Barnes's training perhaps more successfully than any other pupil..."
  3. Joseph Clark (1834–1926) Artist in Oils at Dorset Ancestors, accessed 8 October 2020
  4. 1851 United Kingdom census, Long Street, Cerne Abbas at ancestry.co.uk, accessed 8 October 2020 (subscription required)
  5. "Clark, Joseph ROI 1834–1926" in Christopher Wood, Christopher Newall, Margaret Richardson, Victorian Painters (Antique Collectors' Club, 2008), p. 101
  6. Scientific and Learned Societies of Great Britain: A Handbook Compiled from Official Sources, Vol. 61 (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1964), p. 184
  7. William Barnes in Encyclopædia Britannica, archive.org, accessed 17 October 2020
  8. William Barnes, ed. Bernard Jones, The Poems of William Barnes, Vol. 1 (Centaur Press, 1962), 110; "Jeanes Wedden Day in Mornen", from Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect at WikiSource
  9. "Jones, Annie, Winchester 2c 184" and "Clark, Joseph, Winchester 2c 184" in General Index to Marriages in England and Wales, 1868
  10. "Clark, Joseph, 92 / Thanet 2a 1037" in General Index to Deaths in England and Wales, 1926

Further reading
  • Eric Galvin, Joseph Clark: A Popular Victorian Artist and his World (Portway Publishing, 2016, ISBN 978-1910388259)
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