Beschreibung:

Margaret Clarke (née Crilley) RHA (1888-1961)
Medium: oil on canvas
Size: 39 x 33in. (99.06 x 83.82cm)
Size: 39 x 33in. (99.06 x 83.82cm) Provenance: Collection of Dr Karl Mullen, Kildare; His sale Mealy's 2009; Private collection Born in 1884 in Newry, Co. Down, Margaret Clarke (neé Crilley) was awarded a Department of Art Scholarship to the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art. There, fellow students and friends included Kathleen Fox Seán Keating and her future husband Harry C...Read more Born in 1884 in Newry, Co. Down, Margaret Clarke (neé Crilley) was awarded a Department of Art Scholarship to the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art. There, fellow students and friends included Kathleen Fox Seán Keating and her future husband Harry Clarke She excelled at the DMSA winning numerous scholarships and prizes, and on completing her studies she became Orpen's teaching assistant and subsequently taught the life drawing class until 1919. Clarke first exhibited at the Royal Hibernian Academy in 1913 and quickly established her artistic reputation with her portraits, subject paintings, landscapes, still-lifes and drawings. In 1927 she became the second woman artist to be elected a full constituent member of the RHA. In addition to the RHA Clarke exhibited widely both in Ireland and abroad, and she held two solo exhibitions (1924 and 1939). She was a founder member of the Irish Exhibition of Living Art. Throughout her career she was an active figure on the Irish art scene, a regular visitor to galleries and exhibitions, and generous in her encouragement of young artists. The 2017 exhibition Margaret Clarke An Independent Spirit (National Gallery of Ireland and the F.E. McWilliam and Studio) presented a welcome reappraisal of her work. Notable among the exhibits were several portraits ranging from candid portrayals of family members and friends to more formal but no less discerning portraits of figures from public life. Clarke was a remarkable portraitist in her insightful expression of a sitter's inner character. The present portrait of two young girls appears to be a further instance of her thoughtful characterization. The girl seated in the armchair, with the open illustrated book, looks thoughtful, as if pondering something she has read. Her companion is intent on her doll, as if adjusting its clothing. This doll, with a blue and pink dress and blue hair bow, appears in The English Breakfast (1930), one of Clarke's Empire Marketing Board posters. The girls seem at ease in each other's company while absorbed in their own activities. A sense of quiet intimacy is reinforced in the setting, believed to be the Clarke home at 48 North Circular Road. A certain prominence is given to the bookcase, which Clarke also employed in her 1928 portrait of Éamon De Valera. In the present work the attention afforded to the books on the shelves, the open book and the two volumes on the floor is striking. The name 'Orpen' can be distinguished on a buff coloured book on the top shelf. The names 'Yeats' and 'AE' are visible on the spines of two books on the shelf below. On the bottom shelf is a volume with word 'L'Art' clearly legible on its damaged spine. The russet volume in the foreground is a copy of Lennox Robinson's play Crabbed youth and age, first performed in 1922 and first published by G.P. Putman's Sons in 1924. The cover illustration, of a dramatist manipulating his puppet characters, is by Harry Clarke The books are indicative of the cultural milieu in which the Clarkes moved. Clarke herself was an avid reader and in a number of letters she recounted the delights of bookshops in Paris and Zwemmer's in London. A provisional identification of the sitters might be proposed. The features of the girl in profile resemble those of the artist's daughter Ann (b. 1917) who modelled for individual portraits and also some of Clarke's subject paintings of the 1920s. Given the air of informality, in the setting of the Clarke home, the other girl might be a friend or perhaps a cousin, one of the daughters of the artist's sister Minnie who was married to Wa