Sir George Clausen, RA, RWS (1852-1944) [Aw73]
WOODCUTTERS, 1899
Watercolour and body colour over pencil; signed and dated lower right: G. Clausen 1899 (H. 24 cm, W. 29 cm)
Two woodcutters bind lengths of wood into faggots. It is autumn, or early winter – times in the countryside calendar when hedges were cut and timber sorted into poles or lengths suitable for hearths and fires. Clausen here captures a yearly task that would soon be swept away by the mechanisation of agriculture in the twentieth century.
The subject matter and style are typical of Clausen’s middle period. The son of a Danish interior designer and a Scottish mother, Clausen trained at the Government Art Training School (which later became the Royal College of Art), South Kensington. He also studied in Antwerp, but the country that transformed his style was France. Bastien Lepage, Millet, the Impressionists, and Post-Impressionists all influenced Clausen; in this watercolour the colouring and tone are typical of his work in the 1890s.
Clausen plays with diagonals, horizontals and, in particular, triangles: the mound of the haystack echoed by the break in the clouds. The style is loosely Impressionist; the men hard at work, oblivious to our gaze.
Exhibited: Sotheby’s, London, Watercolours from Winchester College, 1988, no. 42.
Provenance: The Fine Art Society, London, 1947; bequest of Colonel Arthur Brooke, 1954.