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Cross-platform, graphics API agnostic, "Bring Your Own Engine/Framework" style rendering library.
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olcPixelGameEngine
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The clipping feature you mentioned was actually the first issue opened, https://github.com/SFML/SFML/issues/1. There have been two separate attempts that I'm aware of to get the feature in there, but it's a slow moving library and it's hard to get features in. This is a curse, but also a blessing because it's hard to build something when the foundations are moving beneath your feet -- there's benefits to being slow moving.
I think if you're not going to use an existing game engine, it makes sense to learn OpenGL and implement things yourself, or use something with the explicit goal of being a rendering abstraction like bgfx. It's more of a time commitment though, and sfml is much simpler and easier to get started with.
I would also recommend GLM
If you want something simple (single file to drop in a project) with a nice easy C++ API for 2D graphics there is OneLoneCoder's Pixel Game Engine.