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- Louis Clarke
- Also known as
-
Louis Clarke
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primary name: Clarke, Louis Colville Gray
- Details
- individual; collector; curator; British; Male
- Life dates
- 1881-1960
- Address
- Berkeley House, Hay Hill, London
Leckhampton House, Cambridge
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
- Biography
- Connoisseur, collector, and donor to BM and Fitzwilliam; born 2 May 1881, youngest of ten sons to Stephenson Clarke and Agnes Maria Bridger, and inherited considerable wealth. Educated at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. Visited Ethiopia in 1910 and again, probably in 1911/12, and gave much Ethiopian material to BM in 1913. Continued to excavate and collect very widely across many cultures and periods, but in his later years more usually on the art market than in the field.
Joined staff of the University Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology (now Anthropology) in Cambridge (1922-37); Director of Fitzwilliam Museum (1937-46). Travelled widely in Central and South America, and excavated in Hungary and New Mexico. President of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society (1927-29, 1938-45); Order of Merit of Hungary; Hon. Fellow of the Society of Archaeological and Historical Arts of Hungary; FSA; Hon. LL.D, Cambridge (1959); Fellow of Trinity Hall; member of the Bath Club. Clarke remained single, and at his death on 13 December 1960 he bequeathed most of his collection to the Fitzwilliam.
Member of the Karlbeck Syndicate (q.v.).
- Bibliography
- DNB; 'Who was Who, vol. V: 1951-1960' (London: A. & C. Black, 1984: fourth edition).
Carl Winter, ‘Louis Clarke as a collector’, Apollo 76 (1962), pp.377–83.
