Early Promise, by Joseph Clark

Early Promise

Joseph Clark (1834-1926)

1877

Support: 780 x 634 mm

Collection: Tate

Accession no. N01610

Presented by the Trustees of the Chantrey Bequest, 1877

Colour reproduction not available, but downloaded from the gallery site, as shown there, to acccompany the variety of contemporary responses on record (see below).

These responses vary, even within one review, from a recognition of the work's "humble realism" and wholesomeness, to disappointment in its unsophisticated "pictorial" nature (Graphic).

Clark was suffering now from the perception that he relied too much on a sympathetic response to a situation, and had not raised his sights to innovate, either on an intellectual or technical level. In other words, he had not, after all, taken the "higher ground" that Dafforne had once hoped he would (51). Nevertheless, anyone talking generally about "Victorian Painting" (rather than, say, Pre-Raphaelitism or one one of the major names of the nineteenth-century art-world), would probably be thinking of this kind of work in the domestic genre. — Jacqueline Banerjee

Comments from the Press

292, EARLY PROMISE.—Joseph Clark.

"A shy boy artist, whose works are being critically, but approvingly, scanned by the good humoured parson of the parish and his pretty and sympathetic daughters, while the other members of the young genius's family stand round anxiously waiting for the verdict."

"Is one of the pictures purchased by the Academy out of the Chantrey Fund. There is no painter of the humble, domestic school, not Webster, not Wilkie himself, truer in expression, and more blameless and often pathetic in feeling, than the painter who first started into notice some years ago with the 'Sick Child.' That picture has ever since remained the high water mark of the painter's true and pathetic sentiment, as of his technical excellence." — Times.

"Is a work of humble realism, pure, wholesome, and English in sentiment, irreproachable in expression, and conscientious in details, but with all-but entire absence of all sense of the pictorial elements in a picture, and a most disagreeable technical method, a work, in short, the purchase of which has been determined solely by appreciation of its quality of expression." — Graphic.

"Not one of his best pictures, in expression, painting, or subject. A boy's drawing is being inspected by a benevolent parson, whose daughter — her hair plaited down her back — joins sympathisingly in the examination." — Atheneum.

"Clean, careful, but too smooth." — Daily Telegraph.

Bibliography

Dafforne, James. "British Artists: Their Style and Character, No. LXIII: Joseph Clark." The Art-Journal Vol. 2, issue 15 (March 1863): 49-51. Internet Archive. Web. 23 November 2024.

Early Promise. Tate. Web. 22 November 2024.

Richardson, H.C., ed. Academy Criticisms, 1877. London: Auxiliary Steam Printing Co., 1877. Google Books. Free ebook.

Created 22 November 2024