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A NORTHAMPTONSHIRE ARTIST From Sir Gyles Isham, Bt.
A significant portion of George Clarke's work is archived at
the N.R.O. Also available are some un-indexed photocopies
along with occasional amnesia as to the whereabouts of the
originals. |
Sir,—Your recent articles on my home, Lamport Hall, have prompted me to send you a photograph of an unusual painting preserved here. It represents the Lamport village choir, in the days when lack of organs forced the villagers not only to provide the singers but also the orchestral
accompaniment. The men are all portraits, and the names are recorded on the back of the frame. They are all local people. The picture was painted about 1825 and the artist was the schoolmaster at the time, George Clarke, who has drawn his own portrait (the 'cellist). George Clarke, indeed, deserves more than a passing mention. He was born on February 28, 1790, at the School House, Hanging Houghton, a school founded by the terms of Sir Edmund Isham's will, and of which his father, Joseph Clarke, was the first recorded schoolmaster (appointed 1780). When his father died (1818), George Clarke succeeded him as schoohmaster, a position he held till 1832, when he resigned and went to live in the neighbouring village of Scaldwell, where (in the words of the late Christopher Markham in an article in Northamptonshire Notes and Queries, No. 2, Vol. IV, October, 1912) "he devoted himself to drawing as a means of livelihood, visiting every town and village in this and parts of the neighbouring counties, and making sketches of the principal buildings.' Mr. Markham recorded his interest in music and that he used to play the bass viol often in Scaldwell Church, as well as composing Church music. "Whilst living at Hanging
Houghton," wrote Mr. Markham, "he took a sketch of the Lamport choir,
including a good likeness of himself playing the violincello."
Towards the end of his life Clarke became very eccentric, and in 1876 he was found exhausted in a field where he had collapsed and later died.