Edited by Chris Stephens and John-Paul Stonard, Tate Publishing, £24.99, ISBN 978-184976-260-1
Every curator will recognise the frustrating gap between their initial ambition for the works in an exhibition and the final reality when practicalities and financial realities have lent a hand in refining the list. When dealing with one person’s collection, however, the catalogue can offer some consolation.
Tate Britain’s exhibition Kenneth Clark: Looking for Civilisation (until 10 August) assesses Clark’s career as an author, curator, public servant and broadcaster. He is famed as a key figure in the development of 20th-century British art through the financial support, brokerage, and advice he gave to figures such as Henry Moore, Graham Sutherland and Victor Pasmore.
A large part of the show is also given over to the extensive and eclectic range of things that he collected for himself, which went far beyond 20th-century British art.
There was never any kind of list made of these works, so my co-curator John-Paul Stonard and I devoted a considerable amount of research to establishing what Clark owned when, and where those things had gone.
Of course, much of that research remains to be completed and many of the trails we pursued led to dead-ends or, more frustratingly, to collections beyond our reach.
As well as modern British art, Clark had a formidable collection of Cézannes (six oils and about 50 works on paper) along with works by Seurat, Renoir, Sisley, Pissarro, Degas. He also had works by other 19th-century French artists, including Delacroix, Daubigny, Rousseau (both Théodore and “Le Douanier”) and Millet.
His Italian Renaissance collection was huge and encompassed paintings, drawings, small statuettes, and many pieces of maiolica.
And from the age of 12 he started collecting Japanese woodblock prints, while the Chinese and Japanese ceramics that he loved included a magnificent pair of nine-foot high porcelain pagodas thought to have been bought by the Prince Regent for Brighton.
There is also an album of more than 100 illuminated initials from the collection of antiquarian James Dennistoun, which is balanced by a number of 18th-century pub-sign designs that Clark believed to be by John Wooton.
New insights
Our challenge was to produce an affordable catalogue that gave a sense of the rich diversity of Clark’s collection and presented a series of essays examining his activities as an art historian, patron, wartime public official and, crucially, groundbreaking broadcaster.
Among the familiar thematic essays by a range of authors, we have included a bibliography and a filmography, and a photo essay of about 50 works from his collection – major and lesser-known – demonstrating the range and quality. This has allowed us to include some of the key things that he owned that have proved unavailable for loan, including his great late Turner and the Renoir nude that he loved above all else.
The result, I believe, is a publication that genuinely offers new insight into its subject and is an attractive object in itself.
Chris Stephens is the curator of Kenneth Clark: Looking for Civilisation
