Joseph Clare (1846-1917) was a charter member of The Lambs. He was elected in 1875. He was a scenic designer who worked on sets for J. Lester Wallack and his company of Wallack’s Theatre. He was also intimate friends with Charles Dickens.
Clare was born in Ireland during the Great Famine. As a boy, he and his family fled to England, where he found work as a teenager painting scenery. He was apprenticed to William Bronson of the Theatre Royal in Liverpool. Clare was thirteen years old. Four years later, he rose to be the theater’s head scenic painter.
In 1865, Clare moved to Portsmouth to be the head painter of the Theatre Royal. It was here that he first met Charles Dickens, and kept up a friendship with the author until his passing in 1870. Clare said it was Dickens who advised him to take on London and work on sets for his adaptations there. While in London he was associated with the Drury Lane and Adelphi theaters.
Clare and his mother emigrated to New York in 1871, going to work with many other English professionals for Wallack’s Theatre, at the time located at Broadway and Thirteenth Street. It was Clare who painted sets for “The Shaughraun” sensational success at Wallack’s, which featured the founding members of the Club. When The Lambs was launched in 1874, Clare joined many of his work friends in the new Club. He was among the 21 charter members.
Among those who performed on stages that he helped design were Sir Henry Irving, Ada Dyas, John McCullough, James O’Neill (father of Eugene O’Neill), Lamb Dion Boucicault, Helena Modjeska, and Edwin Booth. In 1887 at the Fifth Avenue Theatre, Clare was the scenic designer for “The Begum,” a musical set in India that starred a host of fellow Lambs, including Digby Bell, Edwin Hoff, DeWolf Hopper, Jefferson De Angelis, and Hubert Wilke. He also joined The Players after it was launched in 1888.
The final production Clare worked on was “Othello” for fellow Lamb James K. Hackett. In his sixties, Clare retired to the Brunswick Home in Babylon, Long Island. He died June 3, 1917, at a hospital in Central Islip. He was 71 years old. Under the auspices of the Actors’ Fund, Clare’s funeral was held at Frank E. Campbell’s funeral home and burial in Calvary Cemetery, Queens.
–Researched and written by Shepherd Kevin C. Fitzpatrick, 2025.