Margaret Clarke

Margaret Clarke (née Crilley) was born in Newry, Co. Down in 1884. She moved to Dublin in 1907 to train at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art (DMSA). In 1911, following the completion of her Art Teacher's Certificate, she became William Orpen’s teaching assistant, and after he finished at the DMSA in 1914 she taught the life-drawing class until 1919. At the DMSA she met fellow student Harry Clarke, whom she married in 1914. In 1927, she became the second woman artist, after Sarah Purser, to be elected a full academician of the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA). She received several important awards and commissions, including a Haverty Trust commission for a painting of St Patrick in honour of the Eucharistic Year (1932), and a commission to design Empire Marketing Board posters for a series promoting trade between the Irish Free State and Great Britain. Exhibiting regularly at the RHA from 1913, Clarke also held two solo exhibitions (1924 and 1939), and participated in various group exhibitions in Ireland and abroad, including London, Paris, Brussels, New York, Boston, and Chicago. In addition to her membership of the RHA, she was involved in independent artists’ organisations and was a founding member of the Irish Exhibition of Living Art (IELA). In 1979, the Taylor Galleries held an exhibition of her work. In 2017, the NGI exhibition Margaret Clarke – An Independent Spirit, dedicated to the artist’s life and work, was very well received.