Pegg Clarke (–1959) was an Australian professional fashion, portrait, architectural and society photographer whose work, published frequently in magazines, was referred to by historian Jack Cato as being of "the highest standard."
Biography
Little is known of Pegg Clarke's early years, place or exact date of birth, or of what attracted her to photography. Joan Kerr has her death only as an estimate; "between 1956 and 1958," but her probate documents and death certificate show 6 June 1959 and age 75.Probate Office, Supreme Court of the State of Victoria, 17 August 1959. Public Records Office of Victoria A 2009 exhibition sets her birth at 1883. Pegg Clarke claimed to be some seven years younger than Dora L Wilson, her lifelong companion, who was born in 1883 but an outward shipping register 23 August 1929 has Clarke aged 45 and Wilson 44. Dr. Jim Mitchell, archivist of Scotch College has proposed that she was related to Olive Clarke, secretary to Dr Colin Gilray, the college principal, from 1934 to 1953.
Career Clarke had an early win with a picture Minnie in the October 1915 Australasian photo-review Home Portraiture Competition.
Rosebank from which she was operating before 1923 was row of terraces in Hawthorn that took its name from a 19th-century estate from which their land was subdivided. Registered in the 1924 electoral rolls as 'photographer', her work featured in prominent early 20th century Australian magazines, at first in thumbnail portraits for The Bulletin. While the Australian quarterly The Home launched by Ure Smith in 1920, nominated Harold Cazneaux (1878–1953) as their "Special Photographer", Pegg Clarke, probably 8 to 12 years his younger was accorded bylines in almost every issue from its inception for photographs of stately homes and portraits of artists, and performers. During the interwar period, Clarke's clientele included rich and prominent Melbourne society figures at Government House and Flemington race track; Lady Stradbroke (wife of the Governor of Victoria), Dame Margaret Davidson (wife of the Governor of NSW), and Lady Allardyce (wife of the Governor of Tasmania).Picture story "The Melbourne Church of England Girls' Grammar School", in The Home : an Australian quarterly. Vol. 2 No. 4, 1 December 1921
Her main rival, Ruth Hollick, award-winning society photographer who exhibited in Australia and internationally, and one of Australia's most successful professional photographers soon became a friend. With her professional and life partner Dorothy Izard, Hollick met the painter Dora Wilson and her lifelong companion Pegg Clarke (the pair were soon to share a studio), and together the two close couples forged a strong personal friendship.Barbara Hall, 'Hollick, Ruth Miriam (1883–1977)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, Volume 14, (MUP), 1996 A 1937 article in The Australian Home Beautiful makes clear that despite their lasting relationship their tastes differed, with Wilson favouring period-style decor for their studio and Clarke, the modernist furnishings.
By the end of WWI Clarke, along with her friend Hollick, were considered the leading photographers in Melbourne. Both were respected for their fashion photography, their high society portraits, especially of debutantes and brides, and their portraits of visiting celebrities such those by Clarke of actress Joan Rowell, wives of diplomats and composer/musician Margaret Sutherland. Amongst Clarke's more famous friends, and subjects of her portraits were Australian poet Dorothea Mackellar, and Dame Sybil Thorndike The Australian Gallery Directors' Council notes that, "[t]he role of Cazneaux covering home and social photographs for magazine in Sydney was shared by Hollick and Clarke in Melbourne." Hollick specialised in fashion photography and Clarke in interiors and architecture. She also provided photographic reproductions of her friend Dora Wilson's paintings to the press.
From 1923 Clarke started to advertise her services with mention of her inclusions in "The London Salon 1921" and "The Pittsburgh Salon 1922", and shifted with Wilson to an upstairs studio which they shared in Linden Hall, a block of luxury flats at 403 Glenferrie Road, Malvern, then from 1927-1940s, relocated to a studio she designed at 476 Glenferrie Road, Hawthorn, opposite the private school Scotch College, the clientele and grounds of which she photographed.
Europe
Newspapers' social columns covered the couple's activities regularly, and the farewell parties when in April 1927 they readied to depart on a two-and-a-half year tour of Europe, a trip which was partly funded by the anthropologist and art patron Sir Walter Baldwin Spencer who commissioned them to document monuments.Mary Alice Lee, 'Wilson, Dora Lynnell (1883–1946)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 12, (MUP), 1990 The couple, usually Clarke, corresponded regularly to the Australian press, sending lively descriptions of their adventures touring by car to avoid the cost of rail travel and staying in barns in England, and traveling cheaply by boat, train or horse-cart in often remote parts of France, Spain, Italy, Sardinia, Corsica, Belgium and Germany. A party to which Hollick, Izard and Jessie Traill invited artist friends was held in newly built Chartres House, Melbourne on their return in October 1929.
In June 1936 Wilson and Clarke spent a week together in Sydney sketching and photographing, and a few days on the journey back to make more pictures.
Charitable work
Clarke volunteered her photography for charitable causes; in 1935 a 'Popular Child Competition' in aid of Prince Henry's Hospital Building Fund; and during WWII for the French Red Cross, in which she photographed a series of tableaux vivant of famous paintings acted before the Governor Sir Winston Dugan and Lady Dugan, the Lord Mayor and Mrs. A. W. Coles, the president of the French Red Cross, Mme. Crivelli, and the Consul for France (M. Lancial) and Mme. Lancial, by costumed members of high society and by other artists.For French Red Cross: Governor & Lady Dugan Attend Unusual Entertainment, The Age, Friday 12 April 1940, page 4 She had earlier portrayed, probably for a similar event, L. Bernard Hall, then director the National Gallery of Victoria, dressed as an Italian Nobleman (photograph held in Castlemaine Art Museum). These pictures were reproduced in a double-page spread in Home magazine. For an exhibition at Ruyton Girls' School, Kew, of photographs in aid of war service and Red Cross funds, Clarke donated her own work,"School Camera Club," The Age, Saturday 2 August 1941, page 8 and with Wilson contributed to The Argus Fund the Food for Britain Appeal
Death Dora Wilson died 21 November 1946 after four months of illness, with notices and obituary acknowledging Clarke as "a fellow artist and close friend.""Obituary: Miss Dora Wilson," The Argus, Saturday 23 November 1946, page 4 Pegg Clarke kept working almost until her own death on 6 June 1959 at the Alfred Private Hospital, Toorak. In her will she left an estate of £14,408 (a value of $548,000.00 in 2025) from which she bequeathed £1,000 and an Arthur Streeton painting and Dora Wilson's Collins Street from the Treasury Building to the Lyceum Club; and £100 to the Brotherhood of St Laurence, Melbourne.
Style and reception
Unlike her friends Clarke was not trained at the National Gallery School, though she drew as well as photographed, but was involved with the Melbourne Society of Women Painters and Sculptors. In her personal work, mostly of landscape, Pegg was a Pictorialist and her impressionistic soft-focus photographs share Dora's tonal-impressionist style of painting which later developed a photographic quality which some have seen as influenced by Clarke's camera work. Comparison of the two artists' works was part of the content for two posthumous shows; Together Again: Celebrating the Work of Pegg Clarke and Dora Wilson and the Town Hall Gallery, Hawthorn in 2009 and Pegg Clarke, Dora Wilson: Companion Pieces, at the Melbourne Lyceum Club, 5 September 5 – 13 November 2012.
Clarke did not join the Melbourne Camera Club as Hollick and Izard had, nor any other formal Pictorialist group. She did however come to know, and portray, prominent artists of the period, including Jessie Traill, one of Australia's most important 20th century printmakers who in 1909, moved to a studio in Temple Court, an arcade off Collins Street in Melbourne, occupied by Janet Cumbrae Stewart, Norah Gurdon and A. M. E. Bale, and where she may have first met Dora Wilson. Clarke was also friendly with artists Margaret Maclean, Guelda Pyke, and Polly Hurry.
Winning awards at the All-Australian Peace Exhibition, Adelaide, beside Monte Luke, as announced in the May 1920 Australasian photo-review,.£3 prize in the classes Genre; 507, Miss Pegge Clarke. Enlargements from Kodak film negatives: Miss Pegge Clarke (Vic.) Australasian photo-review.Vol. 27 No. 5 (15 May 1920) Clarke's work was included in a London Salon exhibition of the Royal Photographic Society in 1921, and Director of the Pittsburg U.S.A. Salon of Photography included three of her platinum prints of Australian landscape in their annual Exhibition. A favourable review appeared on her work in 1922 in Adelaide where she was showing with Dora Wilson in Elisabeth Wright's gallery"Pegg Clarke, who has made an enviable name in Melbourne in connection with advanced photography, was responsible for several 'speaking' illustrations," while another reviewer of the same show notes: "Miss Pegg Clarke shows some photographs of scenery that are certainly worthy of being hung as works of art;" and still another:Pegg Clarke (Melbourne) has made of photography a consummate art. On gazing at her photographs, several of what one might aptly term "treescapes" having a soft melting grace reminiscent of a Corot without colouring, makes it absolutely indifferent to academic discussions of whether photography is an art or a craft. Only an artist could make such pictures by camera as those by Pegg Clarke, a very beautiful sample of which (Mist on the Mountains) was hung, in the London Salon, 1921. Pegg showed in a group exhibition at Geelong Art Gallery in July 1922"Examples of pictorial photography by Pegg Clark are included in the exhibition." and in 1923 she exhibited in a Colonial Prints Exhibition run by the English magazine, Amateur Photographer. Her photograph Mist in the Mountains was reproduced in Cameragraphs, and included in the first Exhibition of the Australian Salon of Photography in 1924, the only Australian woman to be included in this exhibition. In a July 1924 review of a group exhibition at Queen's Hall, critic J. S. MacDonald remarks that "Pegg Clarke's three photographs of landscape motifs are excellent." In October, she participated in a group show at the May Club, Netter Buildings, Gresham street, Adelaide about which it was reported that; "Miss Pegg Clarke, of Melbourne, shows some exquisite photographic studies, mostly of gum trees and country scenes. A delightful atmosphere pervades her pictures."A delightful atmosphere pervades her pictures."
On return from touring in Europe in October 1929, in 1930 Clarke held a solo exhibition at The Little Gallery in Melbourne which was reviewed by Arthur Streeton: