Editing Kenneth Clark (section)

==Life and career==
===Early years===
{{multiple image|caption_align=center| align = right| direction = horizontal| header_align = center| footer_align = left| image1 = Charles Sims--Sir Kenneth Clark when he was a boy circa 1911.jpg| width1 =190|alt1=Young white boy paddling in the sea alongside a toy boat| caption1 =As a boy, 1911|image2=Kenneth Clark photographed by Herbert Lambert.jpg|width2=153|alt2= White teenage boy with neat dark hair|caption2=As a teenager, {{circa}} 1918}}

Clark was born at 32 [[Grosvenor Square]], London,{{refn|Clark noted in his memoirs that his birthplace later became the site of the [[Embassy of the United States, London|American Embassy]]<ref name=c1/>|group= n}} the only child of Kenneth Mackenzie Clark and his wife, (Margaret) Alice, daughter of James McArthur of Manchester.<ref name=dnb>Piper, David. [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/30934 "Clark, Kenneth Mackenzie, Baron Clark (1903–1983)"], ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, 2004, retrieved 14 June 2017  {{ODNBsub}}</ref> The Clarks were a Scottish family who had grown rich in the textile trade. Clark's great-great-grandfather invented the cotton [[Bobbin|spool]], and the [[Coats Group|Clark Thread Company]] of [[Paisley, Renfrewshire|Paisley]] had grown into a substantial business.<ref name=c1/> Kenneth Clark senior worked briefly as a director of the firm and retired in his mid-twenties as a member of the "idle rich", as Clark junior later put it: although "many people were richer, there can have been few who were idler".<ref name=c1>Clark (1974), p. 1</ref><ref>Stourton, p. 7</ref> The Clarks maintained country homes at Sudbourne Hall, Suffolk, and at [[Ardnamurchan]], Argyll, and wintered on the French Riviera.<ref name=dnb/><ref>Secrest, p. 18</ref> Kenneth senior was a sportsman, a gambler,{{refn|Clark senior is thought by some to have been the inspiration for the popular song "[[The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo (song)|The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo]]".<ref>Secrest, p. 6</ref>|group= n}} an eccentric and a heavy drinker.<ref name=dnb/><ref>Clark (1974), p. 25</ref> Clark had little in common with his father, though he always remained fond of him. Alice Clark was shy and distant, but her son received affection from a devoted nanny.<ref>Secrest, p. 28</ref>

As an only child not especially close to his parents, the young Clark had a boyhood that was often solitary, but he was generally happy. He later recalled that he used to take long walks, talking to himself, a habit he believed stood him in good stead as a broadcaster: "Television is a form of soliloquy".<ref name=coleman>Coleman, Terry. "Lord Clark", ''The Guardian'', 26 November 1977, p. 9</ref> On a modest scale Clark senior collected pictures, and the young Kenneth was allowed to rearrange the collection. He developed a competent talent for drawing, for which he later won several prizes as a schoolboy.<ref name=times>"Obituary: Lord Clark", ''The Times'', 23 May 1983, p. 16</ref> When he was seven he was taken to an exhibition of Japanese art in London, which was a formative influence on his artistic tastes; he recalled, "dumb with delight, I felt that I had entered a new world".<ref>Hotta-Lister, pp. 183–184</ref><ref>Stourton, p. 15</ref>
[[File:John Ruskin 1863.jpg|thumb|left|upright=0.6|[[John Ruskin]], whose writings inspired the young Clark]]
Clark was educated at [[Wixenford School]] and, from 1917 to 1922, [[Winchester College]]. The latter was known for its intellectual rigour  and – to Clark's dismay – enthusiasm for sports, but it also encouraged its pupils to develop interests in the arts.<ref>Torrance, p. 13; and "Battlefields of Winchester", ''Country Life'', 6 April 1989, p. 183</ref> The headmaster, Montague Rendall, was a devotee of Italian painting and sculpture; he inspired Clark, among many others, to appreciate the works of [[Giotto]], [[Botticelli]], [[Giovanni Bellini|Bellini]] and their compatriots.<ref>Secrest, p. 39; and Stourton, p. 25</ref> The school library contained the collected writings of [[John Ruskin]], which Clark read avidly, and which influenced him for the rest of his life, not only in their artistic judgments but in their progressive political and social beliefs.<ref>Stourton, p. 22</ref>{{refn|Clark's biographer James Stourton writes, "His debt to Ruskin can never be sufficiently emphasised, and it informed many of his interests: the Gothic Revival, J. M. W. Turner, socialism, and the belief that art criticism can be a branch of literature. But above all, Ruskin taught Clark that art and beauty are everyone's birthright – and he took that message into the twentieth century."<ref>Stourton, p. 5</ref>|group= n}}

From Winchester, Clark won a scholarship to [[Trinity College, Oxford]], where he studied modern history. He graduated in 1925 with a second-class honours degree. In the ''[[Oxford Dictionary of National Biography]]'', [[David Piper (curator)|Sir David Piper]] comments that Clark had been expected to gain a first-class degree, but had not applied himself single-mindedly to his historical studies: "his interests had already turned conclusively to the study of art".<ref name=dnb/>

While at Oxford, Clark was greatly impressed by the lectures of [[Roger Fry]], the influential art critic who staged the first [[Post-Impressionism]] exhibitions in Britain. Under Fry's influence he developed an understanding of modern French painting, particularly the work of [[Paul Cézanne]].<ref name=dtel>Dorment, Richard. [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-reviews/10841255/Kenneth-Clark-Looking-for-Civilisation-a-lifetimes-understanding.html "Kenneth Clark: Looking for Civilisation, review"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180114130629/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-reviews/10841255/Kenneth-Clark-Looking-for-Civilisation-a-lifetimes-understanding.html |date=14 January 2018 }}, ''The Telegraph'', 19 May 2014</ref> Clark attracted the attention of Charles F. Bell, Keeper of the Fine Art Department of the [[Ashmolean Museum]]. Bell became a mentor to him and suggested that for his [[Bachelor of Letters|B Litt]] thesis Clark should write about the [[Gothic Revival architecture|Gothic revival]] in architecture. At that time it was a deeply unfashionable subject; no serious study had been published since the nineteenth century.<ref>"The Gothic Mood", ''The Observer'', 24 February 1929, p. 6</ref> Although Clark's main area of study was the [[Renaissance]], his admiration for Ruskin, the most prominent defender of the neo-Gothic style, drew him to the topic. He did not complete the thesis, but later turned his researches into his first full-length book, ''The Gothic Revival'' (1928).<ref name=dnb/> In 1925, Bell introduced Clark to [[Bernard Berenson]], an influential scholar of the Italian Renaissance and consultant to major museums and collectors. Berenson was working on a revision of his book ''Drawings of the Florentine Painters'', and invited Clark to help. The project took two years, overlapping with Clark's studies at Oxford.<ref>[http://arthistorians.info/berensonb "Berenson, Bernard"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180323220213/http://arthistorians.info/berensonb |date=23 March 2018 }}, Dictionary of Art Historians, retrieved 18 June 2017</ref>

===Early career===
[[File:Leonardo da Vinci - Head of Leda - Google Art Project.jpg|thumb|[[Leonardo da Vinci]]: ''Head of [[Leda and the Swan (Leonardo)|Leda]]'', in the [[Royal Collection]]|upright]]
In 1929, as a result of his work with Berenson, Clark was asked to catalogue the extensive collection of [[Leonardo da Vinci]] drawings at [[Windsor Castle]]. That year he was the joint organiser of an exhibition of Italian painting which opened at the Royal Academy on 1 January 1930. He and his co-organiser [[David Lindsay, 28th Earl of Crawford|Lord Balniel]] secured masterpieces never seen before outside Italy, many of them from private collections.<ref name="dictionary">[http://arthistorians.info/clarkk "Clark, Sir Kenneth MacKenzie"] [sic], ''Dictionary of Art Historians'', retrieved 18 June 2017 {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180331104156/http://arthistorians.info/clarkk|date=31 March 2018}}</ref> The exhibition covered Italian art "from [[Cimabue]] to [[Giovanni Segantini|Segantini]]" – from the mid-thirteenth to the late-nineteenth century.<ref>"Italian Art Exhibition", ''The Times'', 4 October 1929, p. 12</ref> It was greeted with public and critical acclaim, and raised Clark's profile, but he came to regret the propaganda value derived from the exhibition by the Italian dictator [[Benito Mussolini]] who had been instrumental in making so many sought-after paintings available.<ref>Stourton, p. 72</ref> Several senior figures in the British art world disapproved of the exhibition; Bell was among them, but nevertheless he continued to regard Clark as his favoured successor at the Ashmolean.<ref>Stourton, pp. 80–81</ref>

Clark was not convinced that his future lay in administration; he enjoyed writing, and would have preferred to be a scholar rather than a museum director.<ref>Clark (1974), p. 201</ref> Nonetheless, when Bell retired in 1931 Clark agreed to succeed him as Keeper of the Fine Art Department at the Ashmolean. Over the next two years Clark oversaw the building of an extension to the museum to provide a better space for his department.<ref>"Term Opens at Oxford", ''The Observer'', 1 October 1933, p. 24</ref> The development was made possible by an anonymous benefactor, subsequently revealed as Clark himself.<ref>"Ashmolean Museum: Lord Halifax Opens New Gallery", ''The Observer'',  3 June 1934, p. 24</ref> His acquisitions while at the Ashmolean included a large piece of mid-19th-century furniture known as the [[Great Bookcase]]. Victorian art and architecture were out of fashion in the 1930s, "generally despised and derided", according to the art historian Matthew Winterbottom,<ref name=mw>Winterbottom, Matthew. [https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:6e33d517-c8dd-4ba7-a69c-006d7e84f0e9/files/mb0197b61cf2125e80749d57fdda6fec7 "Not Acceptable to Present Taste"], ''Decorative Arts Society Journal'', 2017, pp. 15–16</ref>{{refn|Clark's Oxford contemporary, [[Osbert Lancaster]], quoted with approval [[P. G. Wodehouse]]'s 1937 dictum, "Whatever may be said in favour of the Victorians, it is pretty generally admitted that few of them were to be trusted within reach of a trowel and a pile of bricks".<ref>Lancaster, p. 64</ref>|group=n}} but Clark believed that they should be represented in the collection, although the bookcase was not put on display until 2016.<ref name=mw/> A later curator of the museum wrote that Clark would be remembered for his time there, "when, with his characteristic mixture of arrogance and energy, he transformed both the collections and their display."<ref>Harrison, Colin. "Kenneth Clark at the Ashmolean", ''The Ashmolean'', Spring 2006, ''quoted'' in Stourton, p. 83</ref>

===National Gallery===
In 1933 the director of the [[National Gallery]] in London, [[Augustus Daniel|Sir Augustus Daniel]], was aged sixty-seven, and due to retire at the end of the year. His assistant director, [[William George Constable|W. G. Constable]], who had been in line to succeed him, had moved to the new [[Courtauld Institute of Art]] as its director in 1932.<ref>[[Alec Clifton-Taylor|Clifton-Taylor, Alec]], rev. Rosemary Mitchell. [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/30960 "Constable, William George (1887–1976)"], ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, 2004, retrieved 18 June 2017 {{ODNBsub}}; and Stourton, pp. 89–90</ref> The historian [[Peter Stansky]] writes that behind the scenes the National Gallery "was in considerable turmoil; the staff and the trustees were in a state of continual warfare with each other."<ref>Stansky, p. 189</ref> The chairman of the trustees, [[Arthur Lee, 1st Viscount Lee of Fareham|Lord Lee]], convinced the [[Prime Minister of the United Kingdom|prime minister]], [[Ramsay MacDonald]], that Clark would be the best appointment, acceptable to the professional staff and the trustees, and able to restore harmony.<ref>Stansky, pp. 189–190; and Stourton, p. 90</ref> When he received MacDonald's offer of the post, Clark was not enthusiastic. He thought himself too young, aged 30, and once again felt torn between a scholarly and an administrative career. He accepted the directorship in January 1934, although, as he wrote to Berenson, "in between being the manager of a large department store I shall have to be a professional entertainer to the landed and official classes".<ref>Cumming, p. 144</ref>[[File:National Gallery London 2013 March.jpg|thumb|upright=1.6|The [[National Gallery]], [[Trafalgar Square]], London]]At about the same time as accepting MacDonald's offer of the directorship, Clark had declined one from [[George V of the United Kingdom|King George V]]'s officials to succeed [[C. H. Collins Baker]] as [[Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures|Surveyor of the King's Pictures]]. He felt that he could not do justice to the post in tandem with his new duties at the gallery.{{refn|At the National Gallery, Clark was responsible for a collection of about 2,000 paintings: the royal collection numbered 7,000.<ref>Stourton, p. 100</ref>|group= n}} The king, determined to succeed where his staff had failed, went with [[Mary of Teck|Queen Mary]] to the National Gallery and persuaded Clark to change his mind.<ref>Stourton, pp. 1–2</ref> The appointment was announced in ''[[The London Gazette]]'' in July 1934;<ref>"Surveyor of the King's Pictures", ''The Times'', 4 July 1934, p. 14</ref> Clark held the post for the next ten years.<ref>"The King's Pictures", ''The Times'', 28 April 1945, p. 4</ref>

Clark believed in making fine art accessible to everyone, and while at the National Gallery he devised many initiatives with this aim in mind. In an editorial, ''[[The Burlington Magazine]]'' said, "Clark put all his insight and imagination into making the National Gallery a more sympathetic place in which the visitor could enjoy a great collection of European paintings".<ref name=burlington>[https://www.jstor.org/stable/877352 "Kenneth Clark at 70"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180227090636/https://www.jstor.org/stable/877352 |date=27 February 2018 }}, ''The Burlington Magazine'', Vol. 115, No. 844 (July 1973), pp. 415–416 {{subscription required}}</ref> He had rooms re-hung and frames improved; by 1935 he had achieved the installation of a laboratory and introduced electric lighting, which made evening opening possible for the first time. A programme of cleaning was begun, despite sporadic sniping from those opposed in principle to cleaning old pictures;<ref name=burlington/><ref>Constable, W. G. [http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v162/n4109/abs/162166a0.html "Cleaning and Care of the National Gallery Pictures"], ''[[Nature (journal)|Nature]]'', 31 July 1948</ref> experimentally, the glass was removed from some pictures.<ref name=burlington/>{{refn|In their letter of congratulation on his appointment as director, [[Vanessa Bell]] and [[Duncan Grant]] had expressed the hope that he would remove the glass from every picture in the gallery.<ref>Stourton, pp. 90–91</ref>|group= n}}  In several years he had the gallery opened two hours earlier than usual on the day of the [[FA Cup Final]], for the benefit of people coming to London for the match.<ref>"News in Brief", ''The Times'', 17 April 1936, p. 10; and 30 April 1937, p. 13</ref>

Clark wrote and lectured during the decade. The annotated catalogue of the royal collection of Leonardo da Vinci's drawings, on which he had begun work in 1929, was published in 1935, to highly favourable reviews; eighty years later [[Oxford Art Online]] called it "a work of firm scholarship, the conclusions of which have stood the test of time".<ref name=grove>Cast, David. [http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T017955 "Clark, Kenneth"], Grove Art Online, Oxford University Press, retrieved 18 June 2017 {{subscription required}}</ref> Another 1935 publication by Clark offended some in the avant-garde: an essay, published in ''[[The Listener (magazine)|The Listener]]'', "The Future of Painting", in which he rebuked [[surrealism|surrealists]] on the one hand and [[abstract art]]ists on the other for claiming to represent the future of art. He judged both as too elitist and too specialised – "the end of a period of self-consciousness, inbreeding and exhaustion". He maintained that good art must be accessible to everyone and must be rooted in the observable world.<ref>Clark, Kenneth "The Future of Painting", ''The Listener'', 2 October 1935, pp. 543–545</ref> During the 1930s Clark was in demand as a lecturer, and he frequently used his research for his talks as the basis of his books. In 1936 he gave the Ryerson Lectures at [[Yale University]]. From these came his study of Leonardo, published three years later; it too, attracted much praise, at the time and subsequently.<ref name=grove/>
[[File:Scenes from Tebaldeo's Eclogues.jpg|thumb|upright=1.25|One of four paintings by [[Andrea Previtali]] which Clark attributed to [[Giorgione]] in 1937]]
''The Burlington Magazine'', looking back at Clark's time at the gallery, singled out among the works acquired under his leadership the seven panels forming [[Sassetta]]'s San Sepolcro Altarpiece from the fifteenth century, four works by [[Giovanni di Paolo]] from the same period, [[Niccolò dell'Abate]]'s ''The Death of Eurydice'' from the sixteenth century and [[Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres|Ingres]]' ''[[Madame Moitessier]]'' from the nineteenth.<ref>Watson F. J. B. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/881390 "Kenneth Clark (1903–1983)"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180227090636/https://www.jstor.org/stable/881390 |date=27 February 2018 }}, ''The Burlington Magazine'', Vol. 125, No. 968 (November 1983), pp. 690–691 {{subscription required}}</ref>  Other important acquisitions, listed by Piper, were [[Peter Paul Rubens|Rubens]]'s ''Watering Place'', [[John Constable|Constable]]'s ''Hadleigh Castle'', [[Rembrandt]]'s ''Saskia as Flora'', and [[Nicolas Poussin|Poussin]]'s ''[[The Adoration of the Golden Calf]]''.<ref name=dnb/>

One of Clark's least successful acts as director was buying four early-sixteenth century paintings now known as ''[[Scenes from Tebaldeo's Eclogues]]''.<ref name=scenes>[https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/research/scenes-from-tebaldeos-eclogues "Scenes from Tebaldeo's Eclogues"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130407232129/http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/research/scenes-from-tebaldeos-eclogues |date=7 April 2013 }}, National Gallery, retrieved 18 June 2017</ref> He saw them in 1937 in the possession of a dealer in Vienna,<ref name=scenes/> and against the united advice of his professional staff he persuaded the trustees to buy them.<ref name=dnb/> He believed them to be by [[Giorgione]], whose work he considered inadequately represented in the gallery at the time.{{refn|There are only a handful of attested paintings by Giorgione anywhere in the world.<ref>[https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780198604761.001.0001/acref-9780198604761-e-1428 "Giorgione"], ''The Oxford Dictionary of Art'', Oxford University Press, 2004 {{subscription))</ref> The National Gallery in 2025 has two: ''The Adoration of the Kings'', bought in 1884,<ref>[https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/giorgione-the-adoration-of-the-kings "The Adoration of the Kings"], National Gallery. Retrieved 1 January 2025</ref> and {{lang|it|Il Tramonto}} (The Sunset), bought in 1961.<ref>[https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/giorgione-il-tramonto-the-sunset "Il Tramonto"], National Gallery. Retrieved 1 January 2025</ref>|group=n}} The trustees authorised the expenditure of £14,000 of public funds and the paintings went on display in the gallery with considerable fanfare.<ref name=scenes/> His staff did not accept the attribution to Giorgione, and within a year scholarly research established the paintings as the work of [[Andrea Previtali]], one of Giorgione's minor contemporaries.<ref name=scenes/> The British press protested at the waste of taxpayers' money, Clark's reputation suffered a considerable blow, and his relations with his professional team, already uneasy, were further strained.<ref name=dnb/>{{refn|Relations between Clark and his subordinates had been tense for some years: two of his senior officials, Harold Kay and [[Martin Davies (museum director)|Martin Davies]], felt their autonomy undermined by what they saw as Clark's dictatorial management style.<ref>Conlin, p. 158</ref>|group= n}}

====Wartime====
The approach of war with Germany in 1939 obliged Clark and his colleagues to consider how to protect the National Gallery's collection from bombing raids. It was agreed that all the works of art must be moved out of central London, where they were acutely vulnerable. One suggestion was to send them to Canada for safekeeping, but by this time the war had started and Clark was worried about the possibility of submarine attacks on the ships taking the collection across the Atlantic; he was not displeased when the prime minister, [[Winston Churchill]], vetoed the idea: "Hide them in caves and cellars, but not one picture shall leave this island."<ref name=war2>[https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/history/the-gallery-in-wartime/the-gallery-in-wartime?viewPage=2 "The Gallery in wartime"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180205185058/https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/history/the-gallery-in-wartime/the-gallery-in-wartime?viewPage=2 |date=5 February 2018 }}, The National Gallery, retrieved 18 June 2017</ref> A [[Bwlch y Slaters quarry|disused slate mine]] near [[Blaenau Ffestiniog]] in north Wales was chosen as the store. To protect the paintings special storage compartments were constructed, and from careful monitoring of the collection discoveries were made about control of temperature and humidity that benefited its care and display when back in London after the war.<ref name=war2/>

[[File:Myra Hess.jpg|thumb|left|upright=1.05|[[Myra Hess]], inspiration and mainstay of the National Gallery's wartime concerts]]
With an empty gallery to preside over, Clark contemplated volunteering for the [[Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve]], but was recruited, at Lord Lee's instigation, into the newly formed [[Ministry of Information (United Kingdom)|Ministry of Information]], where he was put in charge of the film division, and was later promoted to be controller of home publicity.<ref>Stourton, pp. 178–179 and 184</ref> He set up the [[War Artists' Advisory Committee]], and persuaded the government to employ official [[war artists]] in considerable numbers.  There were up to two hundred engaged under Clark's initiative. Those designated "official war artists" included [[Edward Ardizzone]], [[Paul Nash (artist)|Paul]] and [[John Nash (artist)|John Nash]], [[Mervyn Peake]], [[John Piper (artist)|John Piper]] and [[Graham Sutherland]].<ref>Foss, pp. 196–201</ref> Artists employed on short-term contracts included [[Jacob Epstein]], [[Laura Knight]], [[L. S. Lowry]], [[Henry Moore]] and [[Stanley Spencer]].<ref>Foss, p. 202</ref>

Although the pictures were in storage, Clark kept the National Gallery open to the public during the war, hosting a celebrated series of lunchtime and early evening concerts. They were the inspiration of the pianist [[Myra Hess]], whose idea Clark greeted with delight, as a suitable way for the building to be "used again for its true purposes, the enjoyment of beauty."<ref>[https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/history/myra-hess-concerts/how-the-concerts-started "The Myra Hess Concerts: How the concerts started (1)"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170330103506/http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/history/myra-hess-concerts/how-the-concerts-started |date=30 March 2017 }}, National Gallery, retrieved 18 June 2017</ref> There was no advance booking, and audience members were free to eat their sandwiches and walk in or out during breaks in the performance.<ref>[https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/history/the-myra-hess-concerts/how-the-concerts-started?viewPage=3 "The Myra Hess Concerts: How the concerts started (2)"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180205184821/https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/history/the-myra-hess-concerts/how-the-concerts-started?viewPage=3 |date=5 February 2018 }}, National Gallery, retrieved 18 June 2017</ref> The concerts were an immediate and enormous success. ''[[The Musical Times]]'' commented, "Countless Londoners and visitors to London, civilian and service alike, came to look on the concerts as a haven of sanity in a distraught world."<ref>Ferguson, Howard. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/953712 "Dame Myra Hess"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180227090636/https://www.jstor.org/stable/953712 |date=27 February 2018 }},   ''The Musical Times'', Vol. 107, No. 1475 (January 1966), p. 59 {{subscription required}}</ref> 1,698 concerts were given to an aggregate audience of more than 750,000 people.<ref>[https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/history/the-myra-hess-concerts/the-music?viewPage=3 "The Myra Hess Concerts: The Music"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180205185025/https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/history/the-myra-hess-concerts/the-music?viewPage=3 |date=5 February 2018 }}, National Gallery, retrieved 18 June 2017</ref> Clark instituted an additional public attraction of a monthly featured picture brought from storage and exhibited along with explanatory material. The institution of a "picture of the month" was retained after the war, and, at 2025, has continued to the present day.<ref>[https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/picture-of-the-month/picture-of-the-month-december-2024 "Picture of the month"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20241230132726/https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/picture-of-the-month/picture-of-the-month-december-2024 |date=30 December 2024 }}, National Gallery, December 2024</ref>

In 1945, after overseeing the return of the collections to the National Gallery, Clark resigned as director, intending to devote himself to writing. During the war years he had published little. For the gallery he wrote a slim volume about Constable's ''[[The Hay Wain]]'' (1944); from a lecture he gave in 1944 he published a short treatise on [[Leon Battista Alberti]]'s ''[[De pictura|On Painting]]'' (1944). The following year he contributed an introduction and notes to a volume on Florentine paintings in a series of art books published by [[Faber and Faber]]. The three publications totalled fewer than eighty pages between them.<ref>[https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/13051015 "The Hay Wain"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180205191920/http://www.worldcat.org/title/hay-wain-in-the-national-gallery-london/oclc/13051015%26referer%3Dbrief_results |date=5 February 2018 }}, [https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/217132247 "Leon Battista Albert On Painting"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180205184848/http://www.worldcat.org/title/leon-battista-alberti-on-painting/oclc/217132247?ht=edition&referer=di |date=5 February 2018 }}, and [https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/940292484 "Florentine Paintings"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180205184819/http://www.worldcat.org/title/florentine-paintings-fifteenth-century/oclc/940292484?referer=di&ht=edition |date=5 February 2018 }}, WorldCat, retrieved 18 June 2017</ref>

===Postwar===
[[File:Resurrection detail.JPG|thumb|Detail from ''[[The Resurrection (Piero della Francesca)|The Resurrection]]'' by [[Piero della Francesca]], subject of Clark's 1951 study]]
In July 1946 Clark was appointed [[Slade Professor of Fine Art]] at [[University of Oxford|Oxford]] for a three-year term.<ref>"Sir Kenneth Clark's Appointment", ''The Times'', 25 July 1946, p. 4</ref> The post required him to give eight public lectures each year on the "History, Theory, and Practice of the Fine Arts".<ref>[http://www.ox.ac.uk/media/global/wwwoxacuk/localsites/currentvacancies/furtherparticularsforprofessorships/sladeprofs.pdf "Slade Professorship of Fine Art"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130425214807/http://www.ox.ac.uk/media/global/wwwoxacuk/localsites/currentvacancies/furtherparticularsforprofessorships/sladeprofs.pdf |date=25 April 2013 }}, University of Oxford, retrieved 21 June 2017</ref> The first holder of the professorship had been Ruskin; Clark took as his first subject Ruskin's tenure of the post.<ref name=s224/> [[James Stourton]], Clark's authorised biographer, judges the appointment to be the most rewarding his subject ever held, and notes how, during this period, Clark established himself as Britain's most sought-after lecturer, and wrote two of his finest books, ''Landscape into Art'' (1947) and ''Piero della Francesca'' (1951).<ref name=s224>Stourton, pp. 224–225</ref>{{refn|In 1961, by when the appointment was for an annual term, Clark was again Slade Professor at Oxford.<ref name=dnb/>|group= n}} By this time Clark no longer hankered after a career in pure scholarship, but saw his role as sharing his knowledge and experience with the wide public.<ref>Rothenstein, p. 48</ref>

Clark served on numerous official committees during this period,{{refn|Stourton lists the British Committee on the Preservation and Restitution of Works of Art; the governing council of the Bath Institute of Art; the governing body of the Courtauld; the Council of the [[Festival of Britain]]; and the [[Royal Fine Art Commission]].<ref>Stourton, p. 253</ref>|group= n}} and helped to stage a ground-breaking exhibition in Paris of works by his friend and protégé Henry Moore. He was more in sympathy with modern painting and sculpture than with much of modern architecture. He admired [[Giles Gilbert Scott]], [[Maxwell Fry]], [[Frank Lloyd Wright]], [[Alvar Aalto]] and others, but found many contemporary buildings mediocre.<ref>Stourton, pp. 234–235</ref> Clark had been among the first to conclude that private patronage could no longer support the arts; during the war he had been a prominent member of the state-funded Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts. When it was reconstituted as the [[Arts Council of Great Britain]] in 1945 he was invited to serve as a member of its executive committee, and as chairman of the council's arts panel.<ref>"Sir Kenneth Clark", ''The Manchester Guardian'', 24 June 1945, p. 4; and "The Arts Council", ''The Manchester Guardian'', 29 August 1946, p. 4</ref>

In 1953 Clark became the Arts Council's chairman. He held the post until 1960, but it was a frustrating experience for him; he found himself chiefly a figurehead. Moreover, he was concerned that the way the council went about funding the arts was in danger of damaging the individualism of the artists whom it supported.<ref name=dnb/>

===Broadcasting: administrator, 1954–1957===
The year after becoming chairman of the Arts Council, Clark surprised many and shocked some by accepting the chairmanship of the new [[Independent Television Authority]] (ITA). It had been set up by the Conservative government to introduce [[ITV (TV network)|ITV]], commercial television, funded by advertising, as a rival to the [[British Broadcasting Corporation]]. Many of those opposed to the new broadcaster feared vulgarisation on the lines of American television,<ref>Stourton, p. 270</ref> and although Clark's appointment reassured some, others thought his acceptance of the post a betrayal of artistic and intellectual standards.<ref>Secrest, p. 196</ref>{{refn|Clark recalled being booed at his London club, the [[Athenaeum Club, London|Athenaeum]], after the appointment was announced, although some doubt has been cast on the reliability of his memory on this point.<ref name=dnb/>|group= n}}

Clark was no stranger to broadcasting. He had appeared on air frequently from 1936, when he gave a radio talk on an exhibition of Chinese Art at [[Burlington House]]; the following year he made his television debut, presenting Florentine paintings from the National Gallery.<ref name=genome>[http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/search/0/20?order=asc&q=%22Kenneth+Clark%22#search "Kenneth Clark"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180205190458/http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/search/0/20?order=asc&q=%22Kenneth+Clark%22 |date=5 February 2018 }}, BBC Genome, retrieved 18 June 2017</ref> During the war he appeared regularly on BBC radio's ''[[The Brains Trust]]''.<ref name=genome/> While presiding over the new ITA he generally kept off the air, and concentrated on keeping the new network going during its difficult early years. By the end of his three-year term as chairman, Clark was hailed as a success, but privately considered that there were too few high-quality programmes on the network. [[Lew Grade]], who as chairman of [[Associated Television]] (ATV) held one of the ITV franchises, felt strongly that Clark should make arts programmes of his own, and as soon as Clark stood down as chairman in 1957, he accepted Grade's invitation. Stourton comments, "this was the true beginning of arguably his most successful career – as a presenter of the arts on television".<ref>Stourton, pp. 279–280</ref>

===Broadcasting: ITV, 1957–1966===
[[File:Rembrandt Self-portrait (Kenwood).jpg|thumb|[[Rembrandt]], the last of Clark's ''Five Revolutionary Painters'' series (1960)]]
Clark's first series for ATV, ''Is Art Necessary?'', began in 1958.<ref>"Sir Kenneth Clark", ''The Observer'', 30 March 1958, p. 3</ref> Both he and television were finding their way, and programmes in the series ranged from the stiff and studio-bound to a film in which Clark and Henry Moore toured the British Museum at night, flashing their torches at the exhibits.<ref>"The Spotlight on Statuary: Museum at midnight", ''The Manchester Guardian'', 18 March 1958, p. 7; and Stourton, pp. 282–283</ref> When the series came to an end in 1959, Clark and the production team reviewed and refined their techniques for the next series, ''Five Revolutionary Painters'', which attracted a considerable audience.<ref name=s284>Stourton, pp. 284–285</ref> The [[British Film Institute]] observes:
{{blockquote|With the television camera strolling among the paintings (by [[Francisco Goya|Goya]], [[Pieter Bruegel the Elder|Breughel]], [[Caravaggio]], [[Vincent van Gogh|Van Gogh]] and [[Rembrandt]]) and the urbane, confident Clark conveying his tremendous knowledge in exceptionally clear English, the viewer was treated to the essence of what the painter saw in his creation (not an easy task in the era of black and white television).<ref name=bfi>Vahimagi, Tise. [http://www.screenonline.org.uk/people/id/549769/index.html "Clark, Sir Kenneth (1903–1983)"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121108021535/http://www.screenonline.org.uk/people/id/549769/index.html |date=8 November 2012 }}, British Film Institute, retrieved 22 June 2017</ref>|}}

By the time in 1960 when he presented a programme about [[Pablo Picasso|Picasso]], Clark had further honed his presentational skills and came across as relaxed as well as authoritative.<ref name=s284/> Two series on architecture followed, culminating in a programme called ''The Royal Palaces of Britain'' in 1966, a joint venture by ITV and the BBC, described as "by far the most important heritage programme shown on British television to date".<ref name=s288/> ''[[The Guardian]]'' described Clark as "the ideal man for the job – scholarly, courtly and gently ironical".<ref>Grigg, John. "Beyond the balcony", ''The Guardian'', 29 December 1966, p. 12</ref> ''The Royal Palaces'', unlike its predecessors, was shot on 35mm colour film, but transmission was still in black and white, at which Clark chafed. The BBC was by this time planning to broadcast in colour, and his renewed contact with the corporation for this film paved the way for his eventual return to its schedules.<ref name=s288>Stourton, pp. 288–289</ref> In the interim he remained with ITV for a 1966 series, ''Three Faces of France'', featuring the works of [[Gustave Courbet|Courbet]], [[Édouard Manet|Manet]] and [[Edgar Degas|Degas]].<ref>"A Little Learning is an Entertaining Thing", ''The Times'', 23 April 1966, p. 7</ref>

===''Civilisation'', 1966–1969===
{{main|Civilisation (TV series)|}}
{{Quote box|width=246px|bgcolor=#c6dbf7|align=right|quote= I had no clear idea what "civilisation" meant, but thought it was preferable to barbarism, and fancied that this was the moment to say so.|salign = right|source= Clark on the genesis of ''Civilisation''<ref>Hearn, p. 7</ref>}}
[[David Attenborough]], the controller of the BBC's new second television channel, [[BBC2]], was in charge of introducing colour broadcasting to the UK. He conceived the idea of a series about great paintings as the standard-bearer for colour television, and had no doubt that Clark would be much the best presenter for it.<ref>Stourton, pp. 319–320</ref> Clark was attracted by the suggestion, but at first declined to commit himself. He later recalled that what convinced him that he should take part was Attenborough's use of the word "civilisation" to sum up what the series would be about.<ref name=cxvii/>

The series consisted of thirteen programmes, each fifty minutes long, written and presented by Clark, covering western European civilisation from the end of the Dark Ages to the early twentieth century. As the civilisation under consideration excluded Graeco-Roman, Asian and other historically important cultures, a title was chosen that disclaimed comprehensiveness: ''Civilisation: A Personal View by Kenneth Clark''.{{refn|In the book derived from the series Clark wrote, "I didn't suppose that anyone would be so obtuse as to think that I had forgotten about the great civilisations of the pre-Christian era and the East. However, I confess the title has worried me. It would have been easy in the eighteenth century: ''Speculations on the Nature of Civilisation as illustrated by the Phases of Civilised Life in Western Europe from the Dark Ages to Present Day''. Unfortunately, this is no longer practicable."<ref name=cxvii>Clark (1969), p. xvii</ref>|group= n}} Although it focused chiefly on the visual arts and architecture, there were substantial sections about drama, literature, philosophy and socio-political movements. Clark wanted to include more about law and philosophy, but "I could not think of any way of making them visually interesting."<ref name=h16>Hearn, p. 16</ref>

After initial mutual antipathy, Clark and his principal director, [[Michael Gill (producer)|Michael Gill]], established a congenial working relationship. They and their production team spent three years from 1966 filming in a hundred and seventeen locations in thirteen countries.<ref>Hearn, p. 11</ref> The filming was to the highest technical standards of the day, and quickly went over budget; it cost £500,000 by the time it was complete.<ref>Hearn, p. 14</ref> Attenborough rejigged his broadcasting schedules to spread the cost by transmitting each episode twice in a week.<ref>Hearn, p. 12</ref>
{{Quote box|width=246px|bgcolor=#c6dbf7|align=left|quote= Scholars and academics had their understandable quibbles, but for the general public the series was something like a revelation. Art-museum exhibits in both England and the U.S. reported a surge of visitors following each episode.|salign = right|source= ''[[The New Yorker]]'' on ''Civilisation''<ref name=ny/>}}

There were complaints, then and later, that by focusing on a traditional choice of the great artists over the centuries – all of them male – Clark had neglected women and presented "a saga of noble names and sublime objects with little regard for the shaping forces of economics or practical politics".<ref name=bfi/><ref name=beard/> His ''modus operandi'' was dubbed "the great man approach",<ref name=beard>[[Mary Beard (classicist)|Beard, Mary]], [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/oct/01/kenneth-clark-life-art-civilisation-james-stourton-review "Kenneth Clark by James Stourton: review"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170521003356/https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/oct/01/kenneth-clark-life-art-civilisation-james-stourton-review |date=21 May 2017 }}, ''The Guardian'', 1 October 2016</ref> and he described himself on screen as a hero-worshipper and a stick-in-the-mud.<ref name=c346>Clark (1969), pp. 346–347</ref> He commented that his outlook was "nothing striking, nothing original, nothing that could not have been written by an ordinary harmless bourgeois of the later nineteenth century":<ref>Clark (1977), p. 222</ref>
{{blockquote|I hold a number of beliefs that have been repudiated by the liveliest intellects of our time. I believe that order is better than chaos, creation better than destruction. I prefer gentleness to violence, forgiveness to vendetta. On the whole I think that knowledge is preferable to ignorance, and I am sure that human sympathy is more valuable than ideology.<ref name=c346/>|}}
[[File:Euclid.jpg|thumb|Detail from [[Raphael]]'s ''[[The School of Athens]]'', reproduced on the cover of the book and DVD versions of ''Civilisation'']]

The broadcaster [[Huw Wheldon]] believed that ''Civilisation'' was "a truly great series, a major work&nbsp;... the first magnum opus attempted and realised in terms of TV."<ref>Hearn, p. 15</ref> There was a widespread view among critics, including some unsympathetic to Clark's selections, that the filming set new standards.{{refn|The series was described as "visually stunning" by critics on both sides of the Atlantic, including Paul B. Harvey in the US and Mary Beard in Britain.<ref name=beard/><ref>Harvey, Paul B. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/41780153 "The Art of Being Civilised"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180227090054/https://www.jstor.org/stable/41780153 |date=27 February 2018 }}, ''[[Archaeology (magazine)|Archaeology]]'', Vol. 59, No. 5 (September/October 2006), pp. 52–53.  {{subscription required}}</ref> In 2011 Jonathan Jones wrote in ''The Guardian'' of ''Civilisation's'' "sheer visual beauty&nbsp;... the camerawork and direction&nbsp;... rise to the poetry of cinema".<ref>Jones, Jonathan. [https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2011/jan/24/civilisation-high-definition-kenneth-clark "Why the BBC is right to bring us back to Civilisation"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171006062613/https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2011/jan/24/civilisation-high-definition-kenneth-clark |date=6 October 2017 }}, ''The Guardian'', 24 January 2011</ref>|group= n}} ''Civilisation'' attracted unprecedented viewing figures for a high art series: 2.5 million viewers in Britain and 5 million in the US.<ref name=h16/> Clark's accompanying book has never been out of print, and the BBC continued to sell thousands of copies of the DVD set of ''Civilisation'' every year.<ref>Stourton, p. 452</ref> In 2016, ''The New Yorker'' echoed the words of [[John Betjeman]], describing Clark as "the man who made the best telly you've ever seen".<ref name=ny>Meis, Morgan. [https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-seductive-enthusiasm-of-kenneth-clarks-civilisation "The Seductive Enthusiasm of Kenneth Clark's ''Civilisation''"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170727184308/http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-seductive-enthusiasm-of-kenneth-clarks-civilisation |date=27 July 2017 }}, ''The New Yorker'', 21 December 2016</ref>

The British Film Institute notes how ''Civilisation'' changed the shape of cultural television, setting the standard for later documentary series, from [[Alastair Cooke]]'s ''[[America: A Personal History of the United States|America]]'' (1972) and [[Jacob Bronowski]]'s ''[[The Ascent of Man]]'' (1973) to the present day.<ref name=bfi/>

===Later years: 1970–1983===
Clark made a series of six programmes for ITV. They were collectively titled ''Pioneers of Modern Painting'', directed by his son Colin. They were screened in November and December 1971, with a programme on each of [[Édouard Manet|Manet]], Cezanne, Monet, [[Georges Seurat|Seurat]], [[Henri Rousseau|Rousseau]] and [[Edvard Munch|Munch]]. Although they were shown on commercial television, there were no advertising breaks during each programme.<ref>"The Week's TV", ''The Observer'', 7 June 1971, p. 26</ref> With the aid of a grant from the [[National Endowment for the Humanities]], the [[National Gallery of Art]] in Washington DC acquired copies of the series and distributed them to colleges and universities throughout the US.<ref>[https://www.nga.gov/content/dam/ngaweb/research/gallery-archives/PressReleases/1979-1970/1972/14A11_44192_19720801.pdf  "National Gallery of Art Distributes New Kenneth Clark Film Series on Modern Painting"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180227090636/https://www.nga.gov/content/dam/ngaweb/research/gallery-archives/PressReleases/1979-1970/1972/14A11_44192_19720801.pdf |date=27 February 2018 }}, National Gallery of Art, retrieved 27 June 2017</ref>  In 1973 he made ''Romantic Art Versus Classic Art'' for ITV.<ref name="ReferenceA">{{Screenonline name|549769|Sir Kenneth Clark}}</ref>

In 1976 Clark returned to the BBC, presenting five programmes about Rembrandt.<ref name="ReferenceA"/>  The series, directed by Colin Clark, considered various aspects of the painter's work, from his self-portraits to his biblical scenes. The National Gallery observes about this series, "These art history lectures are an authoritative study of Rembrandt and feature examples of his work from over fifty museums".<ref>[https://www.nationalgallery.co.uk/products/rembrandt-the-kenneth-clark-lectures-dvd/p_1011232 "Rembrandt: The Kenneth Clark Lectures"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170315025047/https://www.nationalgallery.co.uk/products/rembrandt-the-kenneth-clark-lectures-dvd/p_1011232 |date=15 March 2017 }} National Gallery, retrieved 27 June 2017</ref>

Clark was [[Chancellor (education)|chancellor]] of the [[University of York]] from 1967 to 1978 and a trustee of the [[British Museum]].<ref name=dnb/> During his last ten years he wrote thirteen books. As well as some drawn from his researches for his lectures and television series, there were two volumes of memoirs, ''Another Part of the Wood'' (1974) and ''The Other Half'' (1977). He was known throughout his life for his impenetrable façade and enigmatic character, which were reflected in the two autobiographical books: Piper describes them as "elegantly and subtly polished, at times very moving, often very funny [but] somewhat distanced, as if about someone else."<ref name=dnb/>

In his last years Clark suffered from [[arteriosclerosis]]. He died on 21 May 1983 at the age of seventy-nine, in a nursing home in [[Hythe, Kent|Hythe]], Kent, after a fall.<ref name=s398>Stourton, p. 398</ref>