During his long and varied career, English art historian Kenneth M. Clark (1903-1983) served as director of the British National Gallery and of Britain's first commercial television network. He also helped establish government patronage of the arts.

Kenneth Mackenzie Clark was born in London on July 13, 1903, the only child of parents he described as members of the Edwardian "idle rich." While his parents spent the family fortune (amassed by Clark's Scottish great-great grandfather, the inventor of the cotton spool), Clark developed into a lonely, serious young man with a passion for art and complete confidence in his judgment. Lacking a mentor at home or school, he groped his way toward knowledge, winning a scholarship to Oxford. There, he gave up early hopes of becoming a painter to become an aesthete. "...Nothing could destroy me," he said, "as long as I could enjoy works of art and for 'enjoy'...