Harry Clarke’s War. Marguerite Helmers

      

HARRY CLARKE’S WAR

      Dedication

      To those who served

HARRY CLARKE’S WAR ILLUSTRATIONS FOR IRELAND’S MEMORIAL RECORDS 1914–1918 MARGUERITE HELMERS

      First published in 2016 by

      Irish Academic Press

      8 Chapel Lane

      Sallins

      Co. Kildare

      © 2016 Marguerite Helmers

      British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

      An entry can be found on request

      978-07165-3308-5 (Cloth)

      978-07165-3309-2 (PDF)

      Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

      An entry can be found on request

      All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved alone, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

      CONTENTS

       Acknowledgements

       Foreword by Nicola Gordon Bowe

       Introduction

       CHAPTER I.Things Fall Apart: Art Emerges from Conflict

       CHAPTER II.Art, Cinema, and War: Harry Clarke’s Dublin

       CHAPTER III.Art at the Margins: Illustrating Ireland’s Memorial Records

       CHAPTER IV.Spaces of Memory: Ireland’s Memorial Records within the Irish National War Memorial Gardens

       Afterword by Myles Dungan

       Appendix

       Bibliography

       List of Figures

       List of Plates

       Index

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

      This book would not have been possible without the encouragement and support of many people. Librarians and archivists in America, Ireland, and England have helped me track down copies of Ireland’s Memorial Records and related documents. Accordingly, the staffs of many libraries deserve thanks: Peter Harrington, Anne S.K. Brown Military Collection, Brown University Library; University College Dublin; Royal Irish Academy; National Library of Ireland; Early Printed Books, Trinity College Dublin; University of Reading; Imperial War Museum; British Library; Mary Evans Picture Library; and Victoria and Albert Museum, including the archives of the Royal Institute for British Architecture. Maria Choules and Andrew Featherstone at the Commonwealth War Graves Commission offered me a table to review files, and Maria took me under her wing and included tea in the mix. A number of people in Ireland guided me toward resources: Andy Bielenberg, Nicola Gordon Bowe, Tom Burke, James Cronin, Brian Donovan, Catriona Crowe, Christy Cunniffe, Gabriel Doherty, Myles Dungan, Simon Gregor, Fianna Griffin, Angela Griffith, Richard Hearns, Gavin Hughes, Michael Hughes, Roisin Kennedy, Vera Kreilkamp, Angus Mitchell, Ellen Murphy, Stephen Regan and David Rundle.

      Generous support from the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh Faculty Development Program and College of Letters and Science allowed me to spend one year as a fellow of the Institute for the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin Madison. Susan Stanford Friedman’s expert guidance and the marvellous insights of the other fellows shaped the early drafts of the book. Particular gratitude goes to Richard Leson, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee.

      At the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, I thank Dean John Koker and Department Chair Roberta Maguire for the release time to pursue research; Robert Wise, faculty head of the Faculty Development Board; and Provost Lane Earns for support. About my kind colleagues in the Department of English, I cannot say enough, but let me list Paul Klemp, Ron Rindo, Pamela Gemin, Douglas Haynes, Stewart Cole, Pascale Manning, Margaret Hostetler, and Christine Roth for listening. Joshua Ranger’s expertise as an archivist has helped me out many times. My students at the university have been gracious enough to listen to my thoughts about the significance of the First World War in literary studies. Justus Poehls, in particular, deserves special thanks for compiling the bibliography.

      The Milwaukee Irish Fest Foundation funded travel to Ireland for research. A thousand thanks to Patrick Boyle and Cathy Ward. Bewley’s Dublin, where the lovely windows by Harry Clarke grace the dining room and where I’ve enjoyed many cups of tea, contributed to the acquisition of the illustrations. In addition, Castle Leslie, home of my distant cousins Shane Leslie and Norman Beauchamp Leslie, who was killed in the First World War, dedicated funds to acquire images as well.

      To Lisa Hyde at Irish Academic Press, thank you for your patience. Conor Graham, thank you for your enthusiasm and sound advice. To the copyeditors, artists, typesetters and printers without whom this book and others could not exist: you are integral to the process and deserve all readers’ gratitude for your skills.

      This book would not have been possible without the patience and support of my family, Bill, Emily, and Caitlin. Caitlin, in particular, managed many of the details of the Harry Clarke images. Gladys Helmers provided the gift of travel. As I grew up, my parents Helen and Garry filled our house with art, culture and inspiration, and to them I owe the greatest thanks of all.

Foreword

      In context: Harry Clarke’s decorative borders for the Irish National War Memorial Committee’s Books of the Dead, Ireland’s Memorial Records, 1914–1918

In 1923, when these eight volumes were privately published by George Roberts of Maunsel and Roberts, Harry Clarke (1889–1931) was at the peak of his all-too-short artistic career. Aged thirty-four, he had already published a series of critically acclaimed illustrated books with George G. Harrap in London, issued in limited luxury editions as well as regular editions.1 He had also drawn a series of illustrations to Coleridge’s ‘Rime of the Ancient Mariner’, which would have been his first published book with Maunsel & Company (as the firm was originally known2), had not the blocks of the main illustrations, the title page, and the head and tailpiece originals perished when the Dublin publisher’s premises were destroyed by fire in the 1916 Easter Rising.3

      The following year, 1917, Roberts and Clarke, acquainted through mutual friends in Dublin’s literary and arts circles, collaborated on the first purpose-designed and printed catalogue for the Arts & Crafts Society of Ireland’s Fifth Exhibition. Clarke’s striking cover for the Foreword demonstrated his skill as a highly original graphic designer whose intricately drawn framework embellishes the text which it directly illustrates while idiosyncratically interrupting its inner and outer linear boundaries with spirited ornamentation. Roberts’s skill as a printer did full justice to Clarke’s