Joseph Clare
English scenic designer and painter
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Joseph Clare (1846–1917) was an English scenic designer and painter of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. The Concise Oxford Companion to American Theatre stated that during his lifetime "[Clare] gained the reputation of possibly the finest set designer in America, with his settings admired for their elegance and proper sense of period."[1]
Life and career
Born in England in 1846, Joseph Clare apprenticed as a scenic designer at the Royal Court Theatre in Liverpool.[1] He then worked for five years as a resident scenic designer at the Theatre Royal, Portsmouth where he had particular success designing sets for several stage adaptations of novels by Charles Dickens.[2] During his first year at that theatre in 1865, he met and befriended Dickens; maintaining a close relationship with the author until Dickens's death in 1870.[3]
In 1871 Clare was brought to the United States by the theatre impresario Lester Wallack, and was a resident scenic designer at Broadway's Wallack's Theatre until the company disbanded in 1887.[1] In 1894 he designed the sets for the Broadway premiere of Victorien Sardou's Gismonda at the Fifth Avenue Theatre.[4]
Clare died on June 3, 1917 at the age of 71 in Central Islip, New York.[5]