Eularia Clarke - Storm over the Lake

Luke 8: 22–25

Eularia Clarke shows Jesus leaning forward, calming the storm. The boat is in extreme danger of being swamped, with several people already swept overboard and near to death. The crew have had the presence of mind to reef the sail when the storm arose. The blue, black and white pillow (looking more like a travelling rug) on which, according to Mark’s Gospel, Jesus was sleeping, is portrayed in the stern of the vessel. The artist said: ‘I keep praying, “This is meant to be your Son, don’t let him look like just any ordinary human.” I wouldn’t be dragged all that way to Mass by a man who just lived and taught a long time ago.’

Commentary based on A Guide to the Methodist Art Collection.

Born: London, UK, 1914

Died: Southampton, UK, 1970

Early life

Eularia Clarke was born in Notting Hill, London, into a liberal intellectual family with clerics and artists on both sides.

Education

Clarke read Theology at Oxford University and studied painting at the Ruskin School of Art in her spare time. Her tutors included Gilbert Spencer, brother of Stanley Spencer.

Life and career

In the first two decades of her adult life, Clarke painted mainly landscapes and portraits. She fitted this in with bringing up her children as a single mother and teaching art in schools to support her family.

Clarke had been brought up in an Anglican environment but was received into the Roman Catholic Church in 1959. In 1960, after recovering from breast cancer, she went on a pilgrimage to Lourdes, which had an immediate impact on her art. She began a series of paintings depicting Roman Catholic worship and gospel stories. Like Stanley Spencer before her, almost all her religious paintings are set in the twentieth century. However, Eularia’s biblical scenes seem more firmly rooted in everyday life than those of Spencer and her characters are portrayed with greater liveliness, warmth and affection. Between 1959 and 1970, she produced more than 90 religious paintings, making her one of the most prolific painters of religious subjects in the post-war era. As a woman, she often struggled to gain recognition from the clergy for her art. Yet she pursued her artistic practice with determination, resolving to make the Gospel accessible to all.

She wrote articles on faith and art for national publications and became well known in the south of England through appearances on the BBC and Southern Television.

In the last two years of her life, she continued to paint and exhibit even though her cancer had returned and she was experiencing depression. Her career was cut short by her death at the age of 56.

Her active period as a painter of religion lasted only 12 years. This was limited at one end by raising and supporting a family and at the other by her illness and early death.  Eularia refused to sell her works, so her paintings stayed within the family and remained largely unknown. The two paintings in the Methodist Modern Art Collection (The Five Thousand and Storm over the Lake) were an exception.

Importantly, her career was also limited by her gender. Women artists were undervalued, and Clarke died just as they were beginning to assert their presence in the male-dominated artworld. Her work has become better known and appreciated in recent years. This is thanks to regular showings of her two works in the Methodist Modern Art Collection, the work of the Eularia Clarke Trust, and the biography written by her granddaughter, Rebecca Sherlaw-Johnson.

Clarke exhibited her works mainly in educational and church settings including Imperial College London (1968); and Portsmouth Roman Catholic Cathedral (1969). Her commissions included The Last Supper for the Catholic Chaplaincy of Southampton University (1962); and Stations of the Cross for St Joseph’s Church in Havant, Hampshire (1967).

Artist’s website: www.eulariaclarke.co.uk (viewed 18 September 2024)

David Buckman, Artists in Britain Since 1945: Volume 1 A to L. Vol. 1 of 2 volumes, (Bristol, Art Dictionaries Ltd, 2006), p. 290

Seeing the Spiritual: A Guide to the Methodist Modern Art Collection, (Oxford, Methodist Modern Art Collection, 2018), p. 32-35

Rebecca Sherlaw-Johnson, Eularia Clarke: Painter of Religion, (Stonesfield, Oxon, Books with Spirit, 2017)

Roger Wollen, Catalogue of the Methodist Church Collection of Modern Christian Art with an Account of the Collection’s History, (Oxford, The Trustees of the Methodist Collection of Modern Christian Art, 2003), p. 56-60