William Clarke was one of the leading art conservationists of his time through his long service as head of gallery conservation at the Courtauld Institute of Art, as well as his involvement in the philanthropic work of the Mercers’ Company and through his support of many private collections and various heritage artefacts.
He was patrician in style but not temperament; his genes were a powerful transatlantic mix of blue-blooded East Coast America, British landed aristocracy and Swiss haute bourgeoisie.
William Oliver Clarke, known as Smoky to his family and friends, was born in 1943 in Geneva. His Roosevelt grandmother was married to Sir Orme Clarke, Bt, and became the somewhat forbidding chatelaine of Bibury Court in Gloucestershire, where he was introduced to the beauty of the country and the pleasures of outdoor pursuits.
His mother’s family were prosperous merchants from Lake Constance, and the objects of their trade, cigars, provided a pleasure in which he frequently indulged.
Dashing in looks and attire, he was the epitome of a Boy’s Own Englishman, although modest and diffident by nature. He was educated at Gordonstoun, where as a person to whom midwinter sea swimming did not come naturally, he was an unlikely pupil, although his interest in mountains and sports of all types lasted throughout his life. From there he went to Trinity College Dublin, where he fully exploited its reputation at the time for good living.
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After graduating he entered the City, but his growing dissatisfaction with merchant banking led him to decide on a radical change of career and he enrolled in Camberwell College of Arts’ paper conservation course.
His first professional experience came at the British Museum, where he worked for two years. A further two years were spent at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, where he was employed by the Area Museums Service.
These experiences fully prepared him to take charge of a collection of his own, and a splendid opportunity arose in 1978 when the Courtauld Institute recruited its first conservator of works on paper. Clarke would spend the rest of his career — 30 years — at the Courtauld Gallery, dedicating himself to the care, preservation and public enjoyment of its outstanding collections. At the time, the Institute still occupied Home House in Portman Square, the former home of its founder, Samuel Courtauld. Rather than one of the fine rooms designed by Robert Adam, which would have suited his impeccable sense of style and elegant demeanour, Clarke discovered that his new studio was located in a space once used by Courtauld’s driver. He was highly amused by this since his first task as a young banker in the Munich office of Morgan Grenfell had been to fire the company’s chauffeur.
Clarke’s arrival at the Courtauld coincided with Count Antoine Seilern’s magnificent bequest of the Princes Gate collection to the gallery. This brought master drawings by artists such as by Michelangelo, Leonardo, Rubens, Rembrandt and Cézanne under his care. However, his major preoccupation in those early years was the collection of some 3,000 drawings assembled by one of the Institute’s other great benefactors, Sir Robert Witt.
In contrast to Seilern’s masterpieces, Witt had acquired works by lesser-known artists and schools, frequently buying in bulk. These drawings had seldom benefited from any conservation, and securing their preservation would become one of Clarke’s major responsibilities. Hundreds of drawings were methodically transferred from harmful acidic cards into new conservation grade mounts. Countless treatments were carried out, ranging from straightforward repairs to complex and highly skilled interventions — all were recorded in meticulous, handwritten notes in his studio logbooks.
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Throughout his career at the Courtauld Clarke saw the collection of works on paper grow to some 7,000 drawings and 20,000 prints — one of the chief collections of its kind in Britain. He was still at the gallery to see the arrival in 2007 of the magnificent collection of British watercolours bequeathed by Miss Dorothy Scharf. Clarke was a skilled amateur draughtsman and the British school had become a particular interest, most especially the techniques of the watercolourists.
In 1989-90 the Courtauld moved to its new home in Somerset House, and Clarke was heavily involved in planning the safe transfer of the collection to its new home. This time he managed to secure himself a fine light-filled studio at the top of the building, the calm of which was only rarely interrupted by his increasing duties. His appointment as head of gallery conservation brought responsibility overseeing the conservation plans for other areas of the collection. His specialist expertise was regularly sought for the gallery’s programme of research and exhibitions. The Courtauld’s catalogues often included his technical notes and other observations on drawing media and paper types. For many years he taught a specialist module on the Institute’s renowned easel paintings conservation course. His lessons were entertaining and popular. He retired in December 2008. His legacy at the Courtauld is the future of the collection itself.
Among the other beneficiaries of his often laconic but carefully delivered counsel were the Dukes of Devonshire in the restoration of their Michelangelo cartoon and the De Laszlo family in the preservation of the portraitist Philip Alexius’s work, as well as the congregation of St Matthew’s Church, Bayswater, in helping to save the famous Walker organ there, and the residents of Pembridge Conservation Area, Notting Hill, in the restoration of the many period features of their district.
Nowhere was his expertise more evident than in the Mercers’ Company, which he joined in 1971, becoming Master in 1995-96 and chairman of the heritage and arts committee in 1999; he chaired his last meeting in January this year.
Other the institutions that benefited from his advice were the Whitechapel Art Gallery in its contentious acquisition of the library next door, and the English National Opera in the refurbishment of the Coliseum and in its Bayliss outreach programme. He also had a profound influence on the preservation of the Mercers’ own assets, including probably its most valued possession, the lifesized portrait of Sir Thomas Gresham, founder of the Royal Exchange and Gresham College, through an important grant to the National Portrait Gallery for work on understanding Tudor painting techniques; and in the gradual renovation of the company’s hall, its chapel and its ambulatory.
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Although Clarke was private by nature, his personal life reflected his interests and artistic talents, including glass engraving and bookbinding. He was a passionate collector (and conservator) of watercolours as well as being a gifted watercolourist himself, and when in 1981 he was married to Elizabeth Ivimy they were able to combine her family collection with his, creating a happy household that to the outside visitor increasingly resembled the museums which he so admired, particularly when they began to commission paintings from the modernists among their friends.
He is survived by his wife Elizabeth and their three sons.
William Clarke, art conservationist, was born on August 17, 1943. He died of cancer on April 7, 2010, aged 66