Harry Clarke — The Dark Genius of Irish Stained Glass
Irish Artist · 1889–1931
Harry Clarke
Ireland's master of stained glass and the Gothic imagination — dense, jewelled, and unlike anyone before or since.
From his illustrations to Edgar Allan Poe's Tales of Mystery and Imagination — the work that made his name.
The Story
Harry Clarke was Dublin-born, stained-glass trained, and unlike anyone before or since. In a career of barely twenty years he produced more than 130 stained-glass windows and a body of book illustration so strange and beautiful it still stops people in their tracks. George Russell called him one of the strangest geniuses of his time. He was right.
Henry Patrick Clarke was born on 17 March 1889 in Dublin, the son of a church-decorator and craftsman. He trained at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art, studying stained glass under A.E. Child, and swept its prizes. Working through his father's firm — which became Harry Clarke Stained Glass Ltd — he brought a medieval craft into the twentieth century: dense ornamental linework, luminous, almost unearthly colour, and a darkness that never tips into mere decoration. His windows for the Honan Chapel in Cork announced a major talent while he was still in his twenties.
As an illustrator he was in constant demand, and his imagination proved perfectly suited to the macabre. His plates for Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales (1916), Edgar Allan Poe's Tales of Mystery and Imagination (1919, expanded 1923) and Goethe's Faust (1925) drew on Aubrey Beardsley and the Symbolists but pushed further into the uncanny — spidery figures, jewelled surfaces, and a sense of dread that approximates Poe's own.
His most famous commission became his most infamous. The Geneva Window (1930), an Irish Free State gift to the League of Nations depicting scenes from modern Irish literature, was judged too risqué by the government and never sent; it survives today in the Wolfsonian in Miami. By then Clarke was gravely ill. Diagnosed with tuberculosis, he died on 6 January 1931 at Chur in Switzerland, trying to get home to Ireland. He was 41. The work never went out of print, and never lost its strange power.
Timeline
- 1889 — Born 17 March in Dublin.
- 1910s — Trains at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art under A.E. Child.
- 1915–17 — Creates his celebrated windows for the Honan Chapel, Cork.
- 1916 — Illustrates Andersen's Fairy Tales.
- 1919 / 1923 — Illustrates Poe's Tales of Mystery and Imagination.
- 1925 — Illustrates Goethe's Faust.
- 1930 — Completes the Geneva Window, rejected by the Free State.
- 1931 — Dies 6 January at Chur, Switzerland, aged 41.
Where to See His Windows
His prints belong on your wall — but his windows still glow in place. Click a pin to plan a visit.
Cork · Dublin · Dingle — three places to stand inside his colour.
Featured Works
Collector's Guide
The essential Clarke is his Poe's Tales of Mystery and Imagination — the perfect marriage of illustrator and author. For the fairy-tale Clarke, The Little Sea Maid from Andersen is luminous and strange. His design work — the jewel-toned Butterfly textile — shows the same hand in a brighter key, and the great canvas of The Song of the Mad Prince makes a statement piece for any room. Part of our full Irish Art Prints collection.
The Harry Clarke Lover's Gift Guide
Three ways into his world, at three price points.
- I Would Call Aloud — art print · from €55
- The Little Sea Maid — art print · from €72
- Poe's Tales of Mystery and Imagination — art print · from €75
Discover Similar Artists
Mainie Jellett — his modernist contemporary in Irish art. · William Orpen — the great draughtsman of the same generation. · Irish Illustration — more of the tradition Clarke defined.