Kenneth Clark

by James Stourton

  *2 It began with Clark telephoning Colette and saying that he had to give Nolwen something. Seurat’s Sous Bois was proposed, but he told Colette that she would receive the Samuel Palmer of The Harvest Moon. When Clark died Colette went to claim the picture, but Nolwen informed her that her father had given it to her already. Nolwen sold it to the British Museum. A signed note dated 22 December 1982 (Saltwood archive) lists twenty works of art given to Nolwen, including the Seurat, the Palmer, several medieval ivories and sculptures, and works by Renoir, Pissarro, Jack Yeats and Sutherland, and the plates by Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell.

  *3 i.e. Cecil Anrep, Nicky Mariano’s nephew, who inherited BB’s literary estate.

  *4 See Janet Stone to Clark, 25 January 1983 (Tate 8812/1/3/3070). Ian Beck, Janet’s son-in-law, gave this account of the retrieval of the letters to the author: ‘The telephone rang one morning. It was not Ms Secrest, but Jock Murray, K’s publisher. He was boiling over with anger and was quite fierce. He said he was sending a taxi that morning to collect the box of letters and on no account was anybody else to have them, to look at them, and certainly not read them. Ownership of the letters did not confer copyright, the contents were not in Janet’s gift to dispense or words to that effect. Sure enough he arrived by taxi soon after and carted the box away with him’ (email to author, 10 February 2014). As a result, and after consultation with the bibliophile Anthony Hobson, the letters were deposited at the Bodleian Library with a thirty-year moratorium.

  *5 These included important letters from Clark’s mother and father, Maurice Bowra, Lord Crawford, C.F. Bell, Benjamin Britten, Mary Kessell, Gerald Kelly, David Knowles, Owen Morshead, John and Myfanwy Piper, Edith Russell-Roberts and Edith Sitwell. The letters have been the subject of controversy ever since. Meryle Secrest claims that Clark told her she could keep them, a contention contested by the Clark family. The fact that the letters were missing first came to light when Charles Ryskamp arrived to collect the Edith Sitwell letters for the Morgan Library, and they could not be found. Clark asked Catherine Porteous if she knew what Secrest had borrowed, as no lists existed (letter Porteous to Clark, 15 February 1983, in Catherine Porteous’s archive). Ryskamp then made arrangements with Secrest to have the Sitwell letters delivered to the Morgan, where they are today. See Appendix I for the fate of the rest of the letters.

  Epilogue

  Lord Clark’s death drew international attention. As Michael Levey pointed out: ‘Few art historians – few scholars altogether – can expect their death to attract the international coverage that Clark received. In Europe alone, from Zürich to Madrid, via Amsterdam, Rome and Paris, the newspapers united to convey the event: Kenneth Clark gestorben…falleció el critic de arte…Kunsthistoricus overladen…è morto…la mort de Kenneth Clark.’1 The obituaries were long and respectful. John Russell’s piece in the New York Times was typical: it hailed Clark as a pre-eminent figure in British cultural life, and the most naturally gifted art historian of his generation. Only Levey’s obituary looked below the surface and attempted to explore the complexity of the man in all his contradictions, recalling how ‘each meeting seemed, to some, to have to start from the beginning again. Rapport was something of an uncertain quality, never to be assumed, still less guaranteed.’2 The same elusiveness was caught by James Lees-Milne in his diary entry on hearing the news of Clark’s death: ‘Now, I have always regarded him as the greatest man of my generation. I have never known him intimately. Few men have. He did not care for men, and greatly loved women. Was a proud, aloof man with a gracious manner that did not put one at ease. But whenever he gave praise one felt that God Almighty had himself conferred a benediction.’3

  The memorial service, which was of an unprecedented hour-and-a-half length, took place on 13 October 1983 at St James’s church Piccadilly, to which Clark had so often crossed the street from Albany to seek solace. John Sparrow read from Bacon’s essay ‘On Studies’, Alan Clark from the Devotions of John Donne; surprisingly, there was nothing from Ruskin. Yehudi Menuhin played the chaconne from Bach’s D Minor partita. A rather formal address was given by John Pope-Hennessy; behind Clark’s mask of pragmatism, he said, ‘there was, not exactly an artist, but someone who looked at works of art with an artist’s understanding of what they were designed to do and how they had occurred’.4 Listening to Pope-Hennessy’s solemn recitation of Clark’s oeuvre made Roy Strong wonder whether ‘on the Day of Judgement God would turn out to be an art historian raising us up or casting us to oblivion according to the quality of one’s articles in the Burlington Magazine’.5

  Perhaps what was missing from the service was more of Clark’s own voice. Alan described the day in his diary: ‘My father’s memorial service was strange. A motley collection of strays. Poetic justice, as he himself never went to anybody’s…I read the lesson in a very clear and sardonic voice, trying to convey that they were all a shower, Nolwen in particular. If you die in old age, of course, you get a completely different kind of attendance than if you are taken by the Gods.’6 Roy Strong was struck by how few people were there, and noticed other omissions: ‘no reference to Jane at all, no evocation of the warmth, charm and atmosphere that was the essence of the man…as we left Jock Murray offered us tea at Murrays which we declined. Otherwise, we, along with the rest of the Establishment in its old blacks from the back of the wardrobe, hurried away in the pouring rain.’7

  Clark’s will was proved on 13 March 1984. Alan and Colette were the executors, while his literary executors were Jock Murray and Maggie Hanbury. The Garden House and its remaining contents went, as expected, to Colette. All three children shared the residual estate, barring specific bequests to grandchildren and staff. Janet Stone received the David Jones watercolour of Petra, Nolwen £40,000, Leonard Lindley and his wife £8,000. The Ashmolean received the Giovanni Bellini Virgin and Child, and the British Museum the Henry Moore drawings, with a life interest to the children. The probated figure was £5,315,157, an enormous sum at the time.*1

  —

  One day in 1983 Alan Clark was rummaging around a desk in Saltwood when he came across ‘some of my father’s old engagement diaries of the Forties and Fifties. Endless “meetings” fill the day. Civil servants drift in and out. Lunches. Virtually indistinguishable from my own. What’s the point? Nothing to show for it at all. He will be remembered only for his writings and his contribution to scholarship. His public life was a complete waste of time.’8 Then as now, few of us appreciate how Kenneth Clark’s committee work constitutes a hidden legacy by virtue of which the arts have become a natural part of the life and success of the nation, financially supported by government. This state of affairs we take for granted, but in the days when Clark sat on the early committees of CEMA, Covent Garden or the National Theatre, it would have seemed a very uncertain outcome. His influence on the formation of so many institutions that offer the public greater access to art, theatre, opera and design is unparalleled – the only comparison can be with Maynard Keynes. If he first learned the responsibility of giving public service at Winchester, Clark pragmatically and brilliantly exploited the opportunities offered by the war, by new technologies and by television to bring works of art closer to the public, and to open people’s eyes to them. His outstanding wartime leadership at the National Gallery is at odds with his sense of failure at the MoI, but the experience he gained then, and in the nascent organisations in which he was involved, set the stage for all that followed; his subsequent work with Independent Television would have constituted a distinguished career in itself.

  Part of Clark’s effectiveness arose from his ability to connect Oxford and Cambridge, Bloomsbury, Hampstead and Whitehall – he was uniquely balanced between the worlds of scholarship, creativity and power. Until the 1960s he epitomised his time, perfectly expressing the Zeitgeist of what Noel Annan called ‘Our Age’, whose liberal values he shared. Yet he was never predictable, and in the writing of this book I have constantly been surprised by the line he took on any issue. But the values
behind his thinking were consistent, and were invariably those of a Bowrista. Clark might not have asked himself ‘What would Maurice do?’, but that question unconsciously informed his thinking: Bowra remained a beacon and a guide. The chivalry of Monty Rendall, the free-thinking iconoclasm of Bowra, the enthusiasm of Fry, and the range of Berenson all have to be taken into account in an understanding of Clark’s approach to life. In his autobiography he quoted E.M. Forster’s ‘Only connect,’ but this he found harder in reality, not only with the seesaw between the active and the contemplative man, but also because of his highly compartmentalised private life. He was more successful in finding a unity in art.

  When Graham Sutherland told John Sparrow that he felt he did not really know Clark, Sparrow replied, ‘None of us do.’ The patterns of disengagement that are such a feature of his life always lead us back to the little boy at Sudbourne closing the door with relief when the other children left, to return to his own private world. Engagement came with his sense of duty; disengagement was a means of getting back to his thoughts and his work – and nobody worked harder or longer. As he told Janet Stone: ‘Action is the healthiest drug, and I dread the various forms of melancholia which accompany inaction.’9 This was ruefully commented on by many of his girlfriends, one of whom remembered: ‘He was terrifying when he was in that mood, like a train rushing through a station.’10 The fact that he often appeared ruthless to others was baffling to him. If what went on behind the mask can be seen anywhere, it is in the letters to Janet Stone, which are the most revealing window into his thought.

  Possibly the hardest thing to fathom is his constant refrain of failure. Did he really think of his achievements as such? Perhaps disappointment would be closer to the mark – he knew his worth, but could be refreshingly frank about his limitations. These were first brought home to him by his failure to achieve a first class degree at Oxford, although it is doubtful that this preyed upon him for long. It is difficult to see what more he could have expected to achieve, apart from finishing his work on Motives. The claims of failure arose partly from his self-deprecating grand manner, but equally from a process of ageing and the tragic sense of life. What weighed on him most was the feeling of having let people down in his private life, and that he was in some way morally defective – his mother in him at war with his father. On one subject he knew he was irreproachable: his support for artists. He always preferred to see himself as an artist whose vocation was not to paint, but to support and write about his subject. His veneration for artists, and his patience with them, are among his defining characteristics, along with his lifelong patronage of Henry Moore and Graham Sutherland, and his work with the War Artists’ Advisory Committee. With artists and through his public lecturing Clark did connect.

  How did Kenneth Clark wish to be judged? He would have agreed with Flaubert: ‘L’homme c’est rien, l’oeuvre c’est tout.’ Even though he had many admirers, he had no pupils, and left behind no school of art history. He did not have an overall philosophical viewpoint or a novel methodology to be a great art historian in the mould of Warburg or Gombrich. His approach was an idiosyncratic compound of elements that are highly personal. Clark grew up in the long shadow of the Victorians, and put Pater and Ruskin at the centre of his intellectual pantheon. He naturally moved into the world of Edwardian and Berensonian connoisseurship, and absorbed something of Bloomsbury and Roger Fry; his discovery of Germanic art history was the final element in the brew. After the Windsor drawings catalogue, he never made any attempt to be an archival scholar art historian, and his love of writing led him away from devoting his life to connoisseurship in the Berenson mould. In the Foreword to Civilisation he confessed, ‘I cannot distinguish between thought and feeling.’ Clark was always deeply sensitive to works of art, and in this as in so much else, he followed Ruskin.*2 Again like Ruskin – and Pater – his work reminds us that art history can be beautifully written, and Clark increasingly defined himself as a writer. All his best qualities are admirably on display in The Nude. To the professional world of art history this is Clark at his brilliant best, the arresting generalisations leavened by knowledge and passionate engagement with works of art. Among his own books his favourites were The Nude, Ruskin Today and Piero della Francesca.11

  How do we judge Clark against Ruskin and Fry? Each in his time was viewed as the most authoritative English figure writing about art. Ruskin, appalled by the iniquities of an industrial society, turned himself into one of the great humanitarian spirits of his age, crying out against wickedness – in which he included ugliness. With his passion, certainty and faith, Ruskin is as characteristic of the nineteenth century as Clark with his scepticism, irony and detachment is of the twentieth. And Roger Fry, although his writings are seldom read today, opened the eyes of a generation to French art, and in particular to Cézanne – he was a taste-changer in a way that cannot be said of Clark. What all three had in common was an unremitting desire to reach a broad public. Perhaps Ruskin has left through his writings a greater depth of influence on art and society, but Clark left an imperishable imprint on so many national institutions. And through television he could exert an influence that went far beyond Britain.

  In the end, Kenneth Clark was an educator. Civilisation was, as Anita Brookner suggested, one of the most influential undertakings in popular education. It had the rare quality of being uncompromisingly serious, and yet popular. While everybody – even its critics – could see that it satisfied a need, nobody foresaw how many young people would have their lives changed by it. Today Civilisation is acknowledged as a milestone in television history, representing as it does the creation of a genre: the authored documentary series still stretches down to our times. There is also the lingering sense that a new generation should be given a chance to frame their world and culture in the way that Clark could for an earlier one. His example still haunts the moguls of the BBC.*3

  Perhaps Clark wrote his own epilogue in one of his lectures, ‘Art and Society’: ‘Our hope lies in an expanding élite, an élite drawn from every class and with varying degrees of education, but united in a belief that non-material values can be discovered in visible things…I believe that the majority of people really long to experience that moment of pure disinterested, non-material satisfaction which causes them to ejaculate the word “beautiful”; and since this experience can be obtained more reliably through art than any other means, I believe that those of us who try to make works of art more accessible are not wasting our time.’12

  * * *

  *1 The most valuable item was the Turner seascape, now jointly owned by Alan and Colin, which had been valued earlier by Sotheby’s at £850,000. This turned out to be a very low assessment. In June–July 1984 Sotheby’s held a sale of paintings and works of art from Clark’s collection. Apart from the Turner it was an eclectic gathering, strong in drawings, medieval works of art and illuminated pages, Renaissance medals and majolica, as well as works by Pasmore, Sutherland, Potter, Nolan, Piper, and above all Henry Moore. It was a snapshot of Clark’s magpie acquisitions which reached an impressive total of £9,082,469. The greater part of that was accounted for by the Turner, which achieved a price of £7,370,000 and was acquired by the Canadian Thomson family.

  *2 The limits of this approach were pointed out by Simon Schama in his seminar on Clark at the National Gallery in 2009. He observed that Clark’s account of Rembrandt’s Bathsheba describes an idea of what he sees, or wants to see, but without any reference to the subject that Rembrandt was actually painting, i.e. Bathsheba reading David’s letter.

  *3 At the time of going to press the BBC is in fact filming a new ten-part history of art entitled Civilisations. It is to be presented by Simon Schama, Mary Beard and David Olusoga, and has been widely described as inspired by Clark’s series.

  Appendix I:

  The Clark Papers

  A major concern of the scholarly world after Kenneth Clark’s death was the fate of the Saltwood archive, which it rightly suspected was one
of the most important non-political archives of the twentieth century. Alan initially opened negotiations with the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, at which point Alan Bowness, then director of the Tate Gallery (before it bifurcated), successfully stepped in and persuaded him to negotiate a sale in lieu of tax to the Tate, using the proceeds to pay off some of the estate duty liabilities. The archive was the largest the Tate had acquired at the time; the catalogue alone runs to 765 pages. It is held today at Tate Britain, and forms the basis of this biography, covering all aspects of Clark’s life from his National Gallery days onwards, the vast majority of files being post-war.

  The pick of the early letters Meryle Secrest had taken to America, and Alan now tried to retrieve them. With Clark’s death Meryle was able to publish her biography. By then the family had washed their hands of the book, and Jock Murray had withdrawn as its joint publisher.1 Alan wrote witheringly to Meryle: ‘I must explain that I am not in the slightest bit concerned about your book: you write whatever you like and…I have no objection to the emphasis which you place on the personal side of my father’s life. Indeed if it had been better written, in a somewhat more Lytton Strachey style, it could have been very enjoyable.’2 Meryle’s biography came out in September 1984, and received a mixed reaction from the London literary world. All the top reviewers were wheeled out, but there was a feeling that the book did not do justice to Clark’s intellectual life and public achievements. Alan, who Meryle mistakenly suspected was behind the sharper reviews, described the book as ‘worthless’ and written in ‘housemaid’s English’, which inevitably hurt her. From the account in her 2007 autobiography it is clear that she had formed a feeling of mutual dislike for the Clark family.