![The Lake from Skelghyll [Woods]](https://d3d00swyhr67nd.cloudfront.net/w800h800/collection/LAN/PSGA/LAN_PSGA_LANPS_2018_32_212_23-001.jpg)
The Lake District has always been a formidable and beautiful landscape. With its soaring fells, sunlit rocks and sweeping fields, each valley, tarn, beck and ghyll invites exploration. From the high vantage point of Old Man Coniston to the quiet shores of Grasmere or Windermere, its capacity to charm and enchant is well known by now. And one of the Lakes' Romantic captives was Ernest Clarke.
Lancaster Arts, part of Lancaster University, showcases contemporary arts on- and off-campus, including at the Peter Scott Gallery. In 2023, Lancaster Arts was given a large gift of objects by Clarke – an estimated 2,500 items – which included watercolours, etchings, sketchbooks, diaries, letters, photography and other ephemera.
Each year, Lancaster Arts works with an annual theme, such as Dissent (2026), Land (2025) or Flight (2024), which informs the evolution of the collection. As the Clarke donation roughly coincided with the theme of 'Land', it proved a perfect opportunity to learn more about this astonishing and largely unknown output of work. It contained detailed landscapes of nearly every picturesque view to be found in the Lakes, each with accompanying annotations and commentary on the walking routes, and masterful use of colour.
Not only were these artworks beautiful landscapes in their own right, but they also showed a constant and perpetually unsatiated desire to document all facets of Lakeland beauty and nature. The body of work took a lifetime to capture.
Born in 1902 on Christmas Day in the North East – the son of a valet of the Duke of Northumberland – Ernest Eugene Clarke trained at King Edward School of Art in Newcastle and came to live in Windermere in around 1928.
From Clarke's diaries, it seems that one day he decided to go on a walking holiday in the Lakes and what was supposed to be a short sojourn soon turned into a lifetime dedication to painting the Lakes.
Determined to forge this new life for himself, Clarke, with the help of his parents, bought a plot of land and built a small house in Heathwaite overlooking Bowness-on-Windermere called 'The Nest'.
As the years went by, he began profusely creating landscapes, often composing them en plein air – much to the detriment of his health, if his friends' anecdotes are to be believed: even one time sitting on a stool in a blizzard, some way up a fell, diligently painting. He became partly frozen to his easel, from which he needed help getting unstuck!
On Grandsire Track. School Knott, Orrest, Helm Crag. Sheltered from S. E.
Ernest Eugene Clarke (1902–1983) 
This commitment to being hard-working and self-sufficient is a strong pattern in Clarke's character. He grew his own food (often frustrated by his lacklustre cabbages), repaired his house, built his own frames and canvases, and cultivated his life with great effort and fierce independence. Every day, he would set out into the Lakes, often hiking for miles at a time, and then set up his easel and painted what he saw.
After purchasing a motorbike sometime later in his life, his reach across the Lakes grew considerably – towards the western and northern fells of Cumbria. After these journeys, returning home late, he would play the saxophone or finish his miniature compositions, which would later be transposed onto larger sheets and subsequently sold to his many patrons across the country.
Clarke is a hard person to place within the history of British art. His closest contemporaries would have been Alfred Wainwright (1907–1991) and William Heaton Cooper (1903–1995), due to his love of documentation and walking, for the former, and his love of colour and light, for the latter.
There also seems to be confusion around Clarke and another artist called Ernest Ellis Clark (1869–1932), also a landscape artist but from Derby, given that they both share the same initials. Ultimately, our Clarke's retiring nature and lack of representation in public collections have meant that his unique interpretation of the Lakes has largely been neglected.
From 1962, Clarke was a member of the Lake Artists Society, becoming the Vice President for a time, and of Kendal Art Society from 1949. He travelled to Spain, Italy and France, documenting what he saw in his sketchbooks, which he always carried with him.
Clarke was a talented writer and became a member of the Cumbrian Literary Group, known for his humorous short stories. He worked on a manuscript for a book entitled Art and Walking in the Lakes, which went unpublished. He dabbled in writing tales of the macabre, and the manuscript 'A Night at Tossa' (c.1960) is a surprisingly unnerving tale of a group of campers in the heat of Catalonia, and things which go bump in the night.
His writing style showed all the markings of an accomplished writer and demonstrated a clear and ardent voice when he talks about the beauty of the Lakes and the struggles of being an artist in the modern age.
Every now and then, Clarke would organise exhibitions to showcase his work, often in groups with the Lake Artists and Kendal Art societies, or on his own in a café or events space in his locality within Windermere. He would also sometimes organise exhibitions to help charities by giving the proceeds of his work, such as the international Freedom from Hunger Campaign in 1963.
It was one of these exhibitions which caught the eye of a burgeoning art collection forming in the North West. In 1969, Clarke was approached by a visiting lecturer at Lancaster University called Mr J. Thomas, who was helping the newly opened University's 'Embellishments Committee' to create an art collection. They bought three large watercolours, and then bought another three when they were displayed in the university corridors. This small exchange would later help establish the legacy and future home of Clarke's work, although he did not know this at the time.
Clarke was also an accomplished etcher and wood-engraver, supplementing his creative pursuits by designing hundreds of bookplates for people's book collections to increase his earnings. He was also evidently a committed and original landscape photographer: he captured hundreds of vistas of the Lake Fells, sometimes with perilous drops and in arctic conditions. Other photographs show lazy rivers, or his intimate moments with wildlife and his portable radio.
In his lifetime, Clarke's works did manage to make it into other public collections – The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge and Liverpool's public library have several of his bookplates – but his watercolours have gone relatively unseen, until now.
After 1980, his diaries became increasingly sparse, and his walking journeys shorter. In January 1983, at the age of 81, he died at St John of God Hospital, which was the care facility which originated the St John's Hospice Charity in Lancashire.
As of 2026, the majority of Clarke's work in the Peter Scott Gallery has been digitised and will feature on Art UK for the first time. Many of the works were never exhibited in Clarke's lifetime and were used as references or just as a compositional exercise.
On a personal note, digitising Clarke's works has been a pleasure and a highlight of my career. Getting to know him through his paintings and diaries is an honour that most people who work with collections will know of and connect with. I hope to write a book of his work in the future and introduce more people to his quietly luminous vision of the Lakes.
Clarke's work now stands alongside a nationally significant art collection of twentieth-century modern art, and much more, here in Lancaster. His work connects with other landscape artists in the University's collection, such as James Hargreaves Morton (1881–1918), Mary Kent Harrison (1915–1983), Norman Adams (1927–2005) and Willy Tirr (1915–1991).
Clarke's work may now engage in exciting dialogues with that of other artists, such as Henri Matisse (1869–1954) or more contemporary artists, such as Sena Başöz and Jez Dolan. Clarke's work – and his unique, bright vision of the Lakes – will hopefully now be enjoyed by many more people.
'There is a sensation of regret within us that we cannot, in some way, grasp what we see, and hold it for all time. The light will fade; the golden edges of the clouds will turn grey. The distant hills will be lost, and you may never have another chance to visit this wonderful place again. But, by painting the subject, this feeling of impending loss may be alleviated…' – Painting Lakeland Hills (1962) by Ernest E. Clarke, unpublished
Adam Robinson, Art Collections Coordinator at Lancaster Arts, Lancaster University
