Mary Mowbray-Clarke

Mary Horgan Mowbray-Clarke and Madge Jenison opened The Sunwise Turn as "a bookshop of a different kind" at 2 East 31st Street in New York City in 1916. They offered modern texts, sponsored readings and talks about current issues, and exhibited paintings, sculptures, prints, and textiles. Mary Mowbray-Clarke became Charles Burchfield's "impresario" (as he called her), introducing him and his art of Sunwise Turn visitors after he returned to Salem, Ohio and thus launching his professional career. Significantly, she was instrumental in his having the first solo exhibition at the nascent Museum of Modern Art in 1930.

In The Inlander: Life and Work of Charles Burchfield, 1893-1967. (1982), John I. H. Baur wrote about when Burchfield met Mary Mowbray-Clarke in 1916 and how influential she became early in his career in the following edited transcription:

            That summer Burchfield was notified that the Cleveland Art School had obtained a scholarship for him at the National Academy of Design in New York. He was apprehensive: “Can a caged bird fly even if let loose, after years of imprisonment?” But early in October he went. One day in the Academy’s life class convinced him he was through with schools forever, although he stayed on in the city, wondering in his journal why he did so when it made him “grow dead to everything."

            “There followed a confused, unhappy time. I did not know what I wanted in New York. I wanted to go back home, but did not want to be branded a ‘failure.’

            “I had brought with me to New York my summer sketches. Someone (I cannot remember who) suggested that I take them to Montross [the dealer]. I did so. He was interested, and arranged a meeting for me with Walter Pach [the influential art critic]. Mr. Montross offered to keep my sketches in a portfolio and sell them at $25 each, but I could not bring myself to part with them! Pach suggested that I take them to the Sunwise Turn Bookshop (then at 2 East 31st Street—it was run by Mary Mowbray-Clarke and Madge Jamison [Jenison]).

            “And that was how I met Mary Clarke who for the next six year was to be my ‘impresario’ and wise counselor. It was she, indeed, who launched me on my career. During this period I sent my work to her at various times. She showed it in her shop, badgered ‘important’ people into looking at it, and wrote me encouraging letters which helped to keep me going; and introduced me to new books and ideas.

“Hardly a day went by that I did not go into her shop and sit and try to forget my homesickness. I had practically no money. I was rooming with a former classmate (Frank Daniels/Francesco Daniele) who likewise was penniless. For days at a time (it seemed) all we had to eat were rolls and coffee. I worked at various jobs. The longest was a week working an air-brush on Christmas decorations for some department store; one day as a toy designer (!)—fired for incompetence; one night on the switchboard of an electric sign on Broadway.”