Morella
I have admired the work of Harry Clarke since I first saw it and I know many others share this view. He didn't illustrate many substantial books compared with other artists of the time as he was also a glass designer and for this reason and also because there isn't much about him on the Web, I'll make a few of his pictures available for you to look at and relish.
To whet your appetite (possibly), this is what an eminent art critic said of his work for Edgar Allan Poe's "Tales of Mystery and Imagination"
' Never before, I think, have these marvellous tales been visually interpreted with such flesh-creeping, brain-haunting, illusions of horror, terror and the unspeakable. '
(Malcolm Salaman in the 'Studio' 1923/4)
Harry Clarke's other masterpiece of illustration was Goethe's "Faust"
Of this, another leading critic wrote that in the genius of portraying the
' fabulous incubi and succubi of mediaeval wizardry living beyond the grave.. Clarke is not the artist of men and women but the seer of forms which their passions and imaginations assume '
(George Russell)
Pictures
'Drest thus I seem a different creature'
'Does not Death lurk without?'
Thank you to Jeff Richardson for manipulating Clarke's ilustration for Poe's 'A Descent into the Maelstrom' into this wonderful background (and also for 'tweaking' the Terrapin skeleton on my title page)
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