Kenneth Clark

by James Stourton

  Committees took up most of Clark’s week. He once turned down an invitation to join an exhibition selection committee with the words, ‘I consider it most unfortunate that one individual should hold so many responsible positions.’41 But more often than not his sense of obligation got the better of him. It was not ambition, as he explained to Berenson: ‘We lead a quiet and happy life, Jane gardening, I writing my Oxford lectures, which continue to draw large crowds. We have become socially lazy – partly because in these times and in this socialist country entertaining of any kind involves very hard work: and partly because we are like a satisfied power.’42 But iron discipline in his approach to work, fear of boredom, strong self-belief, and above all a sense of public duty, led him to continue to accept new positions. These included the British Committee on the Preservation and Restitution of Works of Art, the Governing Council of Bath Academy of Art, the Home House Trust (i.e. the Courtauld), the Council for the Festival of Britain, and the Royal Fine Art Commission, which offered advice on the design of bridges, new buildings, memorials and town planning. Clark took them all very seriously, and was never going to be a silent presence. In 1948 he joined the Council for the Festival of Britain, but the meetings were so often cancelled that he wrote a strong letter to the chairman, General Lord Ismay, deeply concerned that decisions were being taken without the committee’s knowledge for which its members would be held responsible, and expressing the grave doubts about the organisation of the Festival that were being voiced by sensible people.43

  More rewarding was Clark’s involvement with the Henry Moore exhibition at the Musée de l’Art Moderne in Paris in 1949. Like many Englishmen he regarded France as the benchmark of cultural standards – when on one occasion he was invited to say what defined good English artists he responded, ‘Let us say painters whose work one could show to an intelligent Frenchman without any sense of embarrassment.’ The opportunity to show Henry Moore provided such a chance, but things had gone badly during the setting-up of the exhibition. The sculptures were awkwardly arranged, and Clark found the artist dejected. Kenneth Clark was certainly the only Englishman who could override the organisers, pick up the telephone and request an équipe from the Louvre to help him rearrange the exhibition. Georges Salles sent a team round within the hour, and Clark reported to Berenson: ‘We are here for the opening of our friend Henry Moore’s official exhibition. The French are a good deal disturbed by the thought of an English sculptor achieving such eminence, and were not all wholly co-operative. This gave me the pleasure of exercising my old metier and arranging the show with my own hands.’44 Moore for one believed that Clark had saved the day.

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  It is perhaps at this point worth giving a brief review of Clark’s ambivalent attitude towards contemporary architecture. He always said that there were two questions he most dreaded being asked: recommending a portrait painter or an architect, because he had never found a satisfactory answer to either. Post-war planning forced him to think about the subject of architecture in a more practical way, but – as he told one correspondent who sought his opinion on new buildings for Oxford in 1949 – ‘Personally I am an architectural Blimp. I do not like functionalism on principle, and I particularly dislike it in Oxford…I have grown to have a very gloomy view of architecture in this country.’45 A decade earlier he had offered Giles Gilbert Scott’s Battersea Power Station as his favourite modern building in London.46 He also admired Scott’s Liverpool Cathedral, but considered Basil Spence’s celebrated Coventry Cathedral to be ‘reasonable, contented, mediocre, in a second rate and democratic new world’.47 Clark sat on the Royal Fine Art Commission, where as he ruefully said all they did was tell architects to remove ornament, because, to his way of thinking, after ‘the debauches of the nineteenth century our architects have such indigestion that they are condemned to a diet of Ryvita and Vichy water’.48 He found the Commission a confusing body, uncertain ‘whether it ought to be maintaining high standards of taste or making the best of the inevitable bad job’.49 He did in fact admire the work of some contemporary 1940s architects: Maxwell Fry, Charles Holden and Edwin Lutyens in the UK, Frank Lloyd Wright in the US, Alvar Aalto in Finland, Nils Einar Eriksson in Sweden (specifically his concert hall in Gothenburg). He even admired Le Corbusier’s flats in Paris.*5 But when London’s Festival Hall was completed in 1951 he likened it to ‘a cheap radio set’.50 During the 1960s Clark would still be struggling to keep an open mind about Modernism in his television programmes with the architectural critic Reyner Banham, although his heart was with Betjeman, who was by now badgering him for an honour for the church architect and Gothic Revivalist Ninian Comper. Clark’s interest steadily shifted towards conservation, and although he would never have the high profile of Betjeman in that field, he saw it as vital to protect what was left of Britain’s cities after the ravages of both the Luftwaffe and post-war planning.

  * * *

  *1 By 1948 the firm needed the office space, and Clark felt he had not done enough for them, so he repaid £300 for two years of back rent.

  *2 Clark enjoyed talking about photography, and gave the Centenary Lecture to the Royal Photographic Society, entitled ‘The Relations of Photography and Painting’, in which he posed the question, ‘Is photography an art?’ His answer was: ‘Yes but an incomplete one. It is to a large extent a purveyor of raw material.’

  *3 Later published in an elegant limited edition by John Murray (1973), with wood engravings by Reynolds Stone and printed in his typeface ‘Janet’. The title is taken from Thomas Hardy.

  *4 Cambridge was not neglected: in 1949 Clark delivered the Henry Sidgwick Memorial Lecture there, ‘The Limits of Classicism’, examining the tension of Classical and sensuous creativity. This talk contained a Clarkian gem: ‘The classicists of the eighteenth century made their sums come out by looking up their answers at the end. Seurat and Matisse have made them come out by sheer hard work and a true intellectual process.’ (Henry Sidgwick Memorial Lecture, 7 May 1949, reprinted in Cambridge Review.)

  *5 See letter to John Killick, 7 April 1943 (Tate 8812/1/1/24). But two days later Clark wrote to Miss M.E. Lloyd: ‘Unfortunately, I disagree with almost all your views. I detest straight lines and right-angles as much as did Baudelaire and Blake. I believe that abstractions are cruel and wicked things which imprison the spirit of man; and as for Corbusier with his homage to Louis XIV – words fail me. However, I find it stimulating to read anything with which I am so violently in disagreement’ (9 April 1943, Tate 8812/1/1/27).

  24

  Upper Terrace

  This house represents a desperate rear-guard action. Under the influence of the prevailing moral ideas England has had to destroy one of the most perfect of all English works of art, the great house.

  KENNETH CLARK in Art et Style magazine (April 1947)1

  Clark was immensely proud of Upper Terrace House, and it was something of an achievement to make it so comfortable in war-torn London when builders and materials were hard to find. Life in Hampstead, however, was wonderfully insulated, and it is difficult to find much evidence of post-war austerity in the lives of the Clark family. Clark once introduced a book on art collectors with the recollection: ‘I remember that in the threadbare, unheated, half-starved atmosphere of post-war England, a visit to the Wallace Collection was better than a hot bath.’2

  Social life gradually resumed its pre-war rhythm, and dinner parties were once again arranged. James Lees-Milne was a guest: ‘To dine with the Kenneth Clarks. Admirable hosts…Talked a lot with Jane Clark who is very easy. Her husband’s gracious manner – I don’t think he cares for men one bit – frightens me. Yet he arouses my fervent admiration. He is a sort of Jupiter in intellect.’3 Lees-Milne pondered this dichotomy, and concluded that Clark ‘lacked the fine human instincts that make people sociable and beloved’.4 Cynthia Jebb, a society hostess, had a similar complaint about the Clarks: ‘They are a strange pair, and there is something curiously inhuman and unreal about them’5 – but
she thought that Clark became a much nicer person without Jane. Post-war London lacked the cosmopolitan ease of the Sassoon era, and the Clarks found themselves curiously placed socially – too intellectual for café society, and too rich for most intellectuals. Typical of the intellectuals was Alan Bowness, who lived five minutes away in Hampstead: ‘Everybody knew the gossip – she drinks, he has mistresses.’6 And yet to young visitors Upper Terrace House presented a dazzling and attractive family, overflowing with energy, against a backdrop of great beauty. Clark was always especially kind to young people, even if they found him remote.

  Lord Crawford’s son Robin was a frequent visitor to Upper Terrace, and remembered: ‘Everyone was called Larry, Vivien or Margot, although I had no idea who they all were. The house was beautiful in itself, and I was struck by the vitality of the household…K would take me down to the pub at Holly Hill in Hampstead.’7 Although nearly all visitors found Jane easier than her husband, most young friends of the children became aware of her fearsome temper. Caryl Hubbard, a friend of Colette’s who became an art dealer and occasional researcher for Clark, found the household ‘extremely talkative, they laughed and interrupted each other, full of interesting and amusing family banter’.8 The children were growing up, and everybody could see that Colette had an easy, direct relationship with her father, whereas her twin Colin was frightened of him.*1 All the children went to Oxford (Colette winning a scholarship), but Colin had done National Service in the RAF beforehand, and found it hard to settle. Jane fretted about him, writing anxiously but inaccurately to John Sparrow, ‘he has no real friends at Oxford – only riff raff’.9 Clark, no doubt badgered by Jane, went down to see Col, and revealed the rather conventional ambition for him that if he got a second in his finals, the family firm, Coats, would take him on. In the event he went to work for Laurence Olivier – the result may be seen in the film My Week with Marilyn.10 As for Alan, his father described him to Berenson as ‘though in some ways the least sympathetic member of the family he is also the ablest, parents included’.11

  Jane’s charm was as potent as ever, but all her relationships were imbued with drama. Everybody was an ally or an enemy. She became emotionally involved not only with people in distress, but with everyone she met – from her grand guests to the restaurant coat girl. The exception was her brother Kenneth’s large boisterous family, who would arrive from New Zealand, filling the house with cries of ‘Aunt Betty!’ which set her teeth on edge.*2 Jane was never strong, and she began to have mysterious illnesses. She underwent a major operation in 1951 that Colette believed ‘was probably to do with the womb. She never stopped having operations but their reason was never explained or discussed.’12 Clark confessed to the Berensons: ‘She has not been well, and I am a good deal worried about her – she has grown into a sort of tragic figure without in fact being associated with any tragedy – a sort of Muse without a role. Still, I suppose it is sufficiently tragic to feel ill and nervous three quarters of the time.’13 Despite this, Jane still attracted admirers – in particular, René Massigli, the French Ambassador, a correct, mustachioed figure whom Clark described as ‘a perfect type of Frenchman, intelligent and warm-hearted’. One of Alan’s Oxford girlfriends, Ethne Rudd, recalled arriving at Upper Terrace House, opening a door, and ‘there was Lady Clark in a passionate embrace with M. Massigli’. Jane told Ethne, ‘You go and wash your hands,’ while the Ambassador pretended not to speak English.14 Henry Moore remained a stout friend and admirer of Jane, but nobody has ever been certain whether or not they had an affair.

  Each day a hire service provided a car to wait outside Upper Terrace which would be available all day to take Jane to her hairdresser in Dover Street or her husband to his meetings. Jane issued ‘Lady Clark at Home’ cards for Mondays from 5.30 to 7 during May, June and July. She was always an elegant hostess, as Betjeman observed, thanking her for a dinner: ‘My most vivid recollection…is of you on those Oliver Hill stairs with that Tartan shawl over the black dress, the black sleeves showing, the watered grey silk flowing out, your black head and huge Irish eyes. It was really a lovely picture.’15 When Colette had her nineteenth birthday in 1951, her parents put up a tent in the enormous garden and gave a dance which Jane described to Colin Anderson: ‘I think it was a success – we were lucky in the weather…new friends were made, i.e. the Duchess of Kent danced with Lucian Freud.’*3 The other great events at Upper Terrace were the fashion shows after Jane became the president of the Society of London Fashion Designers, a great compliment to her energy and chic. These attracted visits from the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret. Jane always had a tendency to be star-struck: a letter she wrote to Colin Anderson from a family holiday at Aldeburgh breezily refers to Henry Moore, Graham Sutherland, Frederick Ashton, Sidney Nolan, Ninette de Valois, Benjamin Britten, E.M. Forster, and only at the end mentions the twins.16

  To Clark it was always the artists who were most welcome at Upper Terrace. When Barnett Freedman had been ill, Clark suggested that he come and sit in the garden on a bank holiday, and even offered to arrange a car to collect him. The sceptical Hampstead locals enjoyed musing over Clark’s largesse to artists. Geoffrey Grigson tells the story of the typographer Oliver Simon attempting at a dinner party to discover Clark’s real preference between two of his artist friends: ‘Would Clark talk more about Pipers or about Sutherlands? Which wife, Piper’s or Sutherland’s, would be the more frequently mentioned? Before the Hampstead evening began Oliver filled a trouser pocket with pebbles from his garden path. Every time John’s pictures and John’s wife were mentioned by Clark, Oliver transferred a pebble to one coat pocket, every time Clark’s talk was of Sutherland’s pictures and Sutherland’s wife a pebble was transferred to the other coat pocket; after which only a count was necessary to settle the preferences and stoke the jealousy.’17

  Most people agreed that the setting and art collection of Upper Terrace House were perfect. Colin pointed out that ‘in matters of taste my parents were surprisingly old-fashioned. Their houses were decorated in the style of the Ashmolean museum in Oxford.’18 There is some truth to this, and the house contained one or two examples of almost every kind of artefact from all periods from the Egyptians onwards, with an unusual preponderance of sculpture. Clark always said that his collection represented a compromise between taste and opportunity. He owned far more pictures than he could possibly hang, and enjoyed moving things round. An article in the French magazine Art et Style provides a useful snapshot of the collection as it was arranged in 1947. The hall set the pace, with Degas’s Woman Washing over a Renaissance chest. The library featured one of the Samuel Palmers and Bellini’s Madonna and Child. The drawing room, furnished with Sheraton satinwood furniture, contained ‘the tutelary goddess of the house’, Renoir’s Baigneuse Blonde, together with Cézanne’s Château Noir and Seurat’s Le Bec du Hoc. Other photographs show Renaissance ceramics and bronzes, drawings by Turner, Gainsborough and Tiepolo, and a miniature of Valerio Belli by Raphael. It was an epicurean collection formed for pleasure, an I Tatti with Impressionist paintings.

  Clark shifted things about and hung them according to visual compatibility: ‘there must be some bond of sentiment or of form or colour’. There were a few antiquarian elements, including the extraordinary group of 150 medieval miniatures from the collection of James Dennistoun that Clark had first seen at Auckland Castle.19 He had a taste for artists’ copies, and acquired some curiosities: Cézanne copying Delacroix, Degas copying Cariani, and Duncan Grant after Zurbarán. He owned a genuine Zurbarán, a beautiful still life, Cup of Water and a Rose, that hung in an archway of the drawing room beside a figure study by William Etty. There were some exotic juxtapositions: the enormous seventeenth-century provincial Saltonstall family portrait was flanked by two giant porcelain pagodas made for the Brighton Pavilion. Clark also had eight drawings by Constable, part of a large group of mostly English and Italian Old Master drawings. One, which he bought at the Oppenheimer sale, he hoped was by Michelangelo, and Johannes
Wilde almost accepted it, but today it is believed to be by a follower.20 After the spectacular French paintings, it was the contemporary works by Moore and Sutherland that made the most impact on visitors. Clark once told a correspondent that ‘the merits of our collection are rather like those of the best English films: the supporting cast is about as good as the stars, and it did not cost much to make’.21

  The Clarks enjoyed sharing their collection, whether with visitors to Upper Terrace or through loans to exhibitions. Students from the Central School of Art and the Coal Board Art Circle were typical of the groups he showed around the house. The loans, however, got completely out of hand. Throughout the 1940s at any one time there were anything up to 150 works away; they became impossible to track, and damage inevitably occurred. The Henry Moore drawings and shelter sketchbook were particularly sought-after. Jane explained their motivation for lending: ‘Kenneth never refuses to lend pictures by living artists if the artist wishes them to be shown.’22