Harry Clarke

We were in the Hugh Lane Gallery yesterday - we had Laura over for the weekend and she is interested in art, so we thought it would be good to take her to a museum. It was years since I last was there, and Brendan had never been. It was a perfect opportunity. We saw so much (including the Francis Bacon studio, more about that later) that we spent over 2 hours in there (well over the one hour we had expected to stay - with dire consequences for our pay-and-display situation!).

The last room we looked at was the Stained Glass Gallery, situated just at the entrance / exit. We were mesmerized by Harry Clarke's The Eve of St Agnes, based on Keats' poem (very long poem - I don't think I'll be reading it). Check out this Flickr page for plenty of photographs of Harry Clarke's works. I've copied a couple here from this Flickr group dedicated to the artist, as they seem to be the only location on the web to have decent photos of The Eve of St Agnes.

I can't understand that the Hugh Lane doesn't have good high-res pictures on its site. And the shop didn't have good photos either - they had a few notebooks, mugs and pencils, but the photos were far too small to do it justice. To me, that's a missed opportunity, as I would happily have parted with money for a good reproduction of this mesmerizing work of art.

Next time I'm in London, I'll be checking out the V&A's Stained Glass Gallery, which apparently has some of his work too.

Click on each photo to see them in a slightly larger format. For more Harry Clarke information, check out this website, which appears to be work in progress: www.harryclarke.net.