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.
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
SwedenborgianNew 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.[n 1] 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".[4] He was elected a Member of the
Institute of Oil Painters,[1] which had a membership limited to one hundred.[5] Some of his paintings were named in the
Dorset dialect,[3] in which his schoolmaster William Barnes wrote poetry.[6] "Jeanes Wedden Day in Mornen", which is also the title of a poem by Barnes,[7] 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.[n 2][1] He was also the uncle of another artist,
Joseph Benwell Clark.[4]
Clark died at 95 Hereson Road,
Ramsgate, Kent, on 4 July 1926, his 92nd birthday.[n 3][1][8]
^"Jones, Annie, Winchester 2c 184" and "Clark, Joseph, Winchester 2c 184" in General Index to Marriages in England and Wales, 1868
^"Clark, Joseph, 92 / Thanet 2a 1037" in General Index to Deaths in England and Wales, 1926
References
^
abcd"Clark, Joseph, (4 July 1834–4 July 1926)", in Who Was Who 1916–1928 (1992 reprint,
ISBN0-7136-3143-0): "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"
^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..."
^
ab"Clark, Joseph ROI 1834–1926" in Christopher Wood, Christopher Newall, Margaret Richardson, Victorian Painters (Antique Collectors' Club, 2008), p. 101
^Scientific and Learned Societies of Great Britain: A Handbook Compiled from Official Sources, Vol. 61 (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1964), p. 184