Lord Clark of Civilisation

Kenneth Clark: Life, Art and Civilisation
by James Stourton
Knopf, 2016, 478 pages, $65
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This new and detailed biography is unlikely to be surpassed by any further single work on Kenneth Clark. That is the case despite Stourton’s own modest averral that his book should be seen as “notes towards a definition”. Whilst others (and particularly art historians) may well produce further studies on Clark and his major achievement on the cultural history of the West, the BBC series Civilisation, they are likely to be studies of a much more specialised nature. What Stourton gives us is not the first biography of Clark; that was provided by Meryle Secrest’s book of 1984. Instead, Stourton gives us the first really detailed study of Clark’s life and work, and it is one based on extensive access to primary archival materials and with the benefit of the passage of the decades.

We are now at nearly fifty years’ remove from 1968, the year in which Clark’s Civilisation series was completed for broadcast in February 1969. We are all familiar with the cultural discontents and direnesses that focused themselves into the evenements of 1968 and have persisted since; Clark’s Civilisation of that year gave us something entirely different.

Stourton has now given us a much more careful study of Clark, his family background, his youth and upbringing and his education than we have had before. This is important, because Clark came from a fairly “privileged” background, and he himself quipped that his parents were part of what used to be called the “idle rich”, adding that “whilst many were richer, few can have been idler”. Even so, Clark’s particular circumstances enabled the early sowing of a deep interest in art and the emergence of a real connoisseur. This was coupled with very good educational opportunities (he attended Winchester, followed by Oxford University) such that there was never any risk that the young Clark would disappear and sink into a miasma of philistinism of the kind all too common at that period. Clark’s early encounters with Bernard Berenson in Florence were of signal importance for his own development and indeed, that experience may be seen as the fons et origo of Civilisation. Stourton tells us much about the influences on Clark, especially the works of John Ruskin, Walter Pater and Jacob Burckhardt.

In 1933, Clark was appointed Director of the National Gallery in London at the age of only thirty; and one Sunday in 1934, King George V visited the Gallery to meet Clark and to press him also to accept the post of Keeper of the King’s Pictures. Despite their many differences, the King and Clark enjoyed each other’s company and Clark accepted the extra post. Clark was knighted in 1938 and during the Second World War he supervised, at Churchill’s direction, the safekeeping of the pictures of the National Gallery in caves in Wales, an interval which enabled careful re-examination and cleaning and detailed photography of most of them. Clark also came to renewed national notice during the war when, in collaboration with Dame Myra Hess, he opened the National Gallery to the famous series of lunchtime concerts, which did much to keep up spirits in blitzed London. Stourton also traces Clark’s career in scholarship. Starting by working with Berenson on his Florentine Drawings project, Clark moved on to write Catalogue of Da Vinci’s Drawings at Windsor Castle (1935), The Nude: A Study of Ideal Form (1956), Looking at Pictures (1960) and Rembrandt and the Italian Renaissance (1966), amongst others.

Clark had early developed a natural talent for lecturing that enabled him to communicate themes in art history. This led him to some of the very earliest activity in televised talks on art for BBC television in the late 1930s, after its pioneering telecasting began from Alexandra Palace in London. Stourton devotes four very good chapters to the story of how Clark came to be chosen to present what became the Civilisation series. Many of Clark’s critics’ viewed him as stuffy, buttoned-up and superior, but the record shows that Clark managed to work well with the diverse team of technical collaborators who enabled him to fulfil this novel and giant undertaking; and that he built warm and effective personal relations on set. This brings us to the next important point about this new biography, in that Stourton, with access to a full archive of Clark materials including letters and with the ready assistance and co-operation of Clark’s family, has been able to round out the personal and private life of his subject to a much greater extent than Meryle Secrest, who had fallen out with Clark while writing her limited biography, which thus did not appear until after Clark’s death.

It emerges that Clark had romantic affairs with several women during his marriage to his first wife Jane, who became more addicted to alcohol as the decades wore on. Not surprisingly, this has come as extra grist to the mill for Clark’s detractors. Almost as if on cue, Guardian reviewers such as Peter Conrad and Mary Beard have alighted upon these revelations in Stourton’s book as if they were additional proof of the caricature of Clark as just an unreconstructed “toff” of unpleasant habits. Reviews by those two, and another even more bitingly critical of Clark by Peter Rennell in the Daily Mail, bristle with all the stigmata, if not of the Trinity Don at his worst (to quote the late Sir Maurice Bowra in another context) then of today’s cultural “Liberal-Left” at its annihilatingly worst.

Most of us have had quite enough of the “history-as-the-butler-saw-it” school of biography; but it should not be thought that Stourton engages in tittle-tattle for its own sake—rather he has mentioned such details in a restrained way, in fairness to the persons involved and simply in order to give us a truer picture of Clark the man and of his life, which is relevant insofar as it impinges on his personal history and his public achievements. But this will not deter trendies with their “in-depth analyses” of art and scholarship as mere cultural “constructs” laid over feet-of-clay “realities”.

A more considered view of Stourton’s book came from Giles Waterford, in Apollo magazine:

Stourton writes with a spare elegance and a sense of period as well as an eye for the revealing anecdote: he lets one imagine, for example, what it was like to visit Clark’s home, Saltwood Castle, for lunch (where very few people were considered “cake-worthy” and invited to stay for tea). The nature of Clark’s career means that the period up to 1945 may stand out more vividly than the post-war years when he became heavily involved in committee work, but the changing nature of Clark’s identity and the analysis of his achievements remain central to the narrative.

Stourton himself has encapsulated Clark as:

the writer who loved action, the scholar who became a populariser, the socialist who lived in a castle, the committee man who despised the establishment, the indefatigable self-deprecator whom many found arrogant, the shy man who loved monsters, the “ruthless” man who hated confrontation, the brilliantly successful man who considered himself a failure, the mandarin who had a passion for lemonade and ice cream.

Like all individuals of great achievement, Clark has had his ready band of detractors (mostly neo-Marxists of various sorts), as well a larger number of admirers who rightly see Civilisation as the great landmark study it was then and still is even now. However, that is par for the course in the often poisonous world of the arts, as in other fields. One thinks, for instance, of the famous self-parodying picture of Sir John Rothenstein, who near his retirement had himself photographed in the basement of the National Gallery alongside the out-of-fashion sculptures under coversheets; and his choice, for one volume of his autobiography, of the title Summer’s Lease, invoking Shakespeare upon that theme. Stourton recalls various mistakes Clark made during his time as Director at the National Gallery, but these are more than balanced by his positive achievements there. He seems to have had more than his fair share of envious enemies in the gallery’s administration and in the art world.

As for Civilisation itself, its star has scarcely waned since its first release in the United Kingdom and then in the USA, where it had an enormous success. When Clark brought out the script in book form, it too had big sales, and copies in both hardback and paperback still circulate widely in the book trade today. Latterly, the advent of DVD and then video-streaming technologies has given a new and likely permanent round of prominence to Civilisation, as has been the case with today’s much readier access to classics and historical archival materials of all kinds. The series catapulted Clark into international fame, such that after Harold Wilson had him elevated into the House of Lords, friendly wags dubbed him “Lord Clark of Civilisation”, whilst his most bitter enemies unfairly damned him as “Lord Clark of Trivialisation”.

Clark was humbled, and latterly troubled, by the tumult of personal adulation Civilisation evoked. He broke down after receiving a laudatory award in Washington. Yet the series continues to have a wide audience even now fifty years later. At the time, Clark received several letters from people who thanked him for saving them from thoughts of suicide, because the Civilisation series had given them “hope to go on with”. Stourton quotes Michael Levy on how Clark’s death drew international attention:

Few art historians—few scholars altogether—can expect their death to attract the international coverage that Clark received. In Europe alone, from Zurich to Madrid, via Amsterdam, Rome and Paris, the newspapers united to convey the event: Kenneth Clark gestorben … fallecio el critic de arte … Kunsthistoricus overleden … e morto … la mort de Kenneth Clark.

James Lees-Milne wrote: “I have always regarded him as the greatest man of my generation.” It seems the BBC plans a new ten-part history of art entitled Civilisations, inspired by Clark’s series. Stourton notes that this initiative follows an exhibition devoted to Clark’s life and achievement held the Tate London in 2014 and, more recently, a highly successful and well-attended conference on Civilisation.

Allow me some observations on particular things that Stourton brings out better than ever in this book. One is the importance of the mentors Clark was lucky enough to have. The story of his apprenticeship with Berenson in the 1920s has been often told. It remained an influence upon him for the rest of his life and Berenson is a brooding presence to be felt in most of the episodes of Civilisation. Stourton also identifies the importance of Clark’s enlightened headmaster at Winchester, “Monty” Rendall, who introduced him to Italian art, so much so that old Wykehamists would detect, in the Civilisation episode about St Francis of Assisi, echoes of a lecture by Rendall. Later, at Oxford, Charles Bell, the Keeper of Fine Art at the Ashmolean Museum, was an influence; it was Bell who introduced Clark to Berenson.

Stourton also points to the powerful influence of Maurice Bowra, Warden of Wadham College, whose ebullient personality served to bring Clark out of his shell as a personality and gave him confidence. Bowra was a classicist, but also what Stourton calls “the nodal figure of that liberal generation of intellectuals and educators that Noel Annan called ‘Our Age’. Bowra had served in the trenches in World War I and gained a lasting dislike of officialdom … his chief weapon was wit [and] all Clark’s priggish fears and inhibitions were blown to smithereens.” Another important influence on Clark was the eminent art historian Aby Warburg, whom Clark had first heard lecturing at Rome in the later 1920s.

Any suggestion that Kenneth Clark was an adherent of the “old guard” of merely reactionary or “academic” bent is dispelled by his long friendships with Henry Moore and others and his ready encouragement of artists such as Oscar Kokoschka, who fled to London from Prague in 1938, rightly fearful for his life and a target of the Nazis’ “Degenerate Art” exhibition in 1937. We in Australia should note Clark’s early fostering and encouragement of the work of Russell Drysdale and Sidney Nolan in London and his astute appraisal of work by other Australian artists such as Constance Stokes, whom Clark once described as “the century’s greatest” draughtswoman. The history of Clark’s trip out to Australia in 1949 and in particular his good advice towards the development of the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria is fairly lightly, but still effectively, covered in Stourton’s narrative of that period in Clark’s life. But this is probably just a matter of one looking at it from an Australian point of view—and even Clark himself was rather confused about Australian geography. However, Stourton does not miss the fact that Clark’s father in his thirties in the 1890s had ventured as far as Australia; and indeed, Stourton notes he named three of his racing yachts “Katoomba”.

One recalls here a crusty Australian art critic, J.S. Macdonald, who made the silly quip in 1949: “What has Sir Kenneth Clark ever done for Art?” It was not only a thoroughly silly comment at the time, but is in the light of Clark’s Civilisation even sillier in retrospect.

Everyone of a certain age has their own Civilisation story. Mine is that I was fortunate as an undergraduate at the University of Queensland to first see the series projected on a large screen from 35mm colour film, obtained for the university by Dr Nancy Underhill with the support of its vice-chancellor, Sir Zelman Cowen.

Some may still question the importance of fine arts and of the Western heritage as explored by Clark in Civilisation. We do not need any Gramsci to remind us how much of a nation’s tone inevitably comes from the top down. And when we look about the world today and see what has been (and is now) offered as the “cultural”, we may well echo Maurice Chevalier’s famous comment about old age: “But consider the alternative!” It is not hard to see, in an epoch when the West has come under renewed attacks, not only upon its principles and its heritage, but upon its very fabric and its peoples, the central importance, for the peoples of the West, in having an authentic tradition which we are prepared to preserve, to nurture and to defend. Clark spoke to these issues at the very outset of Civilisation, in the episode titled “The Skin of Our Teeth”—one both true and telling.

Kenneth Clark’s conversion to Catholicism may have been late in his life in the formal sense; and Stourton seems to imply that, in the end, it and then his reception of the last rites from a Catholic priest were due to the Catholic influence of his second wife Nolwen. However, it is clear, even from many of his on-camera comments in Civilisation, that Clark was “on the way to Rome” as early as the 1960s, if not perhaps even before, in his early times in Italy.

James Stourton’s book is peppered with many indispensable observations and anecdotes about Clark and his wide circle in British arts and letters during the twentieth century. Stourton is a gifted writer whose other books include Great Houses of London and Great Collectors of Our Time. As a former Chairman of Sotheby’s UK, a lecturer on history and Senior Fellow of the Institute of Historical Research in the University of London, he is well qualified to write about Kenneth Clark’s life and his contributions to the history and appreciation of the arts and to British and international cultural life in the twentieth century. This is a very worthwhile book; well produced and illustrated by a goodly selection of black-and-white plates.

Stourton’s biography, which must now be regarded as definitive, is truly a treasure trove for all fans of Kenneth Clark. While it provides, in the further details revealed about aspects of Clark’s private life, ammunition for his critics and traducers, it will be widely welcomed and indispensable for anyone interested in the cultural history and trajectory of the Western heritage. The fitting closing words quoted by Stourton are from the Queen, who upon Kenneth Clark’s death, sent a telegram to his widow Nolwen as follows: “Lord Clark’s loyal and distinguished service to my Father and his outstanding contribution to the world of Arts and Letters will always be remembered.” Mr Stourton’s biography of Clark shows precisely why.