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Lot Essay
In 1889, Clausen acquired a new model named Rose Grimsdale (K. McConkey, George Clausen and the Picture of English Rural Life, Glasgow, 2012, pp. 96-7). Initially she appears in sketchbooks, then in small pastel studies, before posing for the oil painting of A Schoolgirl and for a large pastel entitled Little Rose (both Private collection). In the latter instance her surname is dropped and she is merely identified by a Christian name that was common during the Victorian period. 'Rose' was of course a powerful signifier. One only has to think of Rossetti's rose bower, or Burne-Jones's contemporary 'Briar Rose' series for Buscot Park, to realize the significance of the name. Within a few years of Clausen's paintings of Miss Grimsdale, James McNeill Whistler was to find his own pretty country model in the celebrated Little Rose of Lyme Regis, 1895 (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston). For all of Clausen's distinguished contemporaries, 'Rose' obviously alluded to the beauty of the flower, coming into bloom, or awakened, like a Burne-Jones princess, by a kiss.
For the Rural Naturalist however, such thoughts were suppressed. Clausen had first gone to the countryside because there, 'nothing was made easy for you' (Sir G. Clausen, 'Autobiographical Notes', Artwork, no. 25, Spring 1931, p. 19; quoted in McConkey, 2012, p. 46). With the field workers, you must experience the winter cold and record their weather-beaten features with absolute fidelity, in the open air. The rose symbolism of the Aesthetes was for others; Bastien-Lepage and the French Naturalist painters, with their commitment to documentary accuracy, now led the way, and by the time of his first drawings of Rose Grimsdale, Clausen had become the chief apologist for this 'Modern Realism' in Britain. 'All his [Bastien-Lepage's] personages' Clausen wrote, 'are placed before us in the most satisfying completeness, without the appearance of artifice, but as they live...' (Sir G. Clausen RA, 'Bastien-Lepage and Modern Realism', The Scottish Art Review, vol. 1, 1888, p. 114; quoted in McConkey, 2012). The perspicacious young painter realized that where the earlier realists looked for types, the modern realists or naturalistic painters concentrated on the individual, and where the Impressionists sought for speed and summary in execution, Naturalism meant full exacting realization.
Thus while Clausen approached his new model without the trappings of style and esoteric symbolism, it would be wrong to assume that A Village Girl lacked sophistication. On the contrary, her features demanded a trained intelligence than came from eight years of practice in the fields. As is clear from the present work, her auburn hair, flat nose and rosy cheeks are complemented by piercing brown eyes. While elsewhere, the white pinafore and background foliage can be treated in swift dabs of colour, concentration of purpose is expressed in the delicate delineation of the child's face. We see similar characteristics in A Little Child, 1888 (Leeds City Art Galleries) and The Ploughboy, 1888 (Gracefield Art Centre, Dumfries), where the landscape is reduced to a few scumbled brushstrokes. At the same time, pastels such as Head of a Young Girl, (Rose Grimsdale) were converted into etchings (fig. 1, pastel, 1890, sold in these Rooms, 16 June 2010, lot 110, £505,250) and Rose's profile becomes instantly recognizable even though her full name was concealed in the artist's account books. The portrait was not to be confined to famous or wealthy individuals.
In A Village Girl however important changes in Clausen's style are underway. He had visited the Exposition Universelle in 1889 where he won a silver medal, and where Monet and Bastien-Lepage were both on show. He wrote to his friends Havard Thomas and Peter Henry Emerson, that he was asking himself if grand naturalistic set-pieces, like his own The Girl at the Gate (Tate Britain) were 'actually worth doing' and whether 'every subject requires a large canvas - or finished minuteness of work' (Letter to Peter Henry Emerson, quoted in McConkey, 2012, p. 95). At the same time, there was a ready market for pretty sentimental pictures of country girls that Clausen wished to avoid. He had no interest in popular Victorian notions of beauty derived from the natural world and childhood innocence. Fixing on Rose's features, combining sketch and finish in equal measures, brought new surface tensions, and with the use of pastel for preparatory studies, a greater painterly freedom in the handling of colour. Hence the greater subtlety in the observation of local tints and a stronger emphasis on selective focus that began to emerge in his practice and revealed itself in all its richness in Brown Eyes (fig. 2, 1891, Tate Britain), The Daisy Wreath - A Study in Low Light, Girl in a Field and Rose Pensive (For reference to The Daisy Wreath, see K. McConkey, George Clausen - The Rustic Image, 2012, (exhibition catalogue, The Fine Art Society), no. 12; Girl in a Field (National Museum of Wales, Cardiff), was like the present work, given to a friend - the sculptor Goscombe John; for Rose Pensive, see McConkey, 2012, p. 106. See also Study of a Young Girl leaning against a Tree, pastel, 1891, Christie's, 13 December 2012, lot 42).
Clausen's use of little Miss Grimsdale continued even after his move from Berkshire to Essex in the summer of 1891 - a finished watercolour, Idleness (Private Collection) was sent to the Royal Society of Painters in Watercolours at the end of that year. And as late as 1898 with Noon in the Hayfield, he returned to complete a picture begun around the time of his move (McConkey, 2012, pp. 104, 122-3).
Although painted around 1889-90, A Village Girl remained in the painter's studio until it was given to Richard Crafton Green, an artist friend of the painter, six years later. Crafton Green (1848-1934) was four years older than Clausen. He had studied at Heatherley's Art School and painted flower-pieces, landscapes and figure subjects. He was resident in Saffron Walden at the time of Clausen's move to Essex. At some point in the 1890s he moved to Newport, closer to Widdington, where Clausen had his studio. The circumstances of the gift remain obscure.
KMc.
For the Rural Naturalist however, such thoughts were suppressed. Clausen had first gone to the countryside because there, 'nothing was made easy for you' (Sir G. Clausen, 'Autobiographical Notes', Artwork, no. 25, Spring 1931, p. 19; quoted in McConkey, 2012, p. 46). With the field workers, you must experience the winter cold and record their weather-beaten features with absolute fidelity, in the open air. The rose symbolism of the Aesthetes was for others; Bastien-Lepage and the French Naturalist painters, with their commitment to documentary accuracy, now led the way, and by the time of his first drawings of Rose Grimsdale, Clausen had become the chief apologist for this 'Modern Realism' in Britain. 'All his [Bastien-Lepage's] personages' Clausen wrote, 'are placed before us in the most satisfying completeness, without the appearance of artifice, but as they live...' (Sir G. Clausen RA, 'Bastien-Lepage and Modern Realism', The Scottish Art Review, vol. 1, 1888, p. 114; quoted in McConkey, 2012). The perspicacious young painter realized that where the earlier realists looked for types, the modern realists or naturalistic painters concentrated on the individual, and where the Impressionists sought for speed and summary in execution, Naturalism meant full exacting realization.
Thus while Clausen approached his new model without the trappings of style and esoteric symbolism, it would be wrong to assume that A Village Girl lacked sophistication. On the contrary, her features demanded a trained intelligence than came from eight years of practice in the fields. As is clear from the present work, her auburn hair, flat nose and rosy cheeks are complemented by piercing brown eyes. While elsewhere, the white pinafore and background foliage can be treated in swift dabs of colour, concentration of purpose is expressed in the delicate delineation of the child's face. We see similar characteristics in A Little Child, 1888 (Leeds City Art Galleries) and The Ploughboy, 1888 (Gracefield Art Centre, Dumfries), where the landscape is reduced to a few scumbled brushstrokes. At the same time, pastels such as Head of a Young Girl, (Rose Grimsdale) were converted into etchings (fig. 1, pastel, 1890, sold in these Rooms, 16 June 2010, lot 110, £505,250) and Rose's profile becomes instantly recognizable even though her full name was concealed in the artist's account books. The portrait was not to be confined to famous or wealthy individuals.
In A Village Girl however important changes in Clausen's style are underway. He had visited the Exposition Universelle in 1889 where he won a silver medal, and where Monet and Bastien-Lepage were both on show. He wrote to his friends Havard Thomas and Peter Henry Emerson, that he was asking himself if grand naturalistic set-pieces, like his own The Girl at the Gate (Tate Britain) were 'actually worth doing' and whether 'every subject requires a large canvas - or finished minuteness of work' (Letter to Peter Henry Emerson, quoted in McConkey, 2012, p. 95). At the same time, there was a ready market for pretty sentimental pictures of country girls that Clausen wished to avoid. He had no interest in popular Victorian notions of beauty derived from the natural world and childhood innocence. Fixing on Rose's features, combining sketch and finish in equal measures, brought new surface tensions, and with the use of pastel for preparatory studies, a greater painterly freedom in the handling of colour. Hence the greater subtlety in the observation of local tints and a stronger emphasis on selective focus that began to emerge in his practice and revealed itself in all its richness in Brown Eyes (fig. 2, 1891, Tate Britain), The Daisy Wreath - A Study in Low Light, Girl in a Field and Rose Pensive (For reference to The Daisy Wreath, see K. McConkey, George Clausen - The Rustic Image, 2012, (exhibition catalogue, The Fine Art Society), no. 12; Girl in a Field (National Museum of Wales, Cardiff), was like the present work, given to a friend - the sculptor Goscombe John; for Rose Pensive, see McConkey, 2012, p. 106. See also Study of a Young Girl leaning against a Tree, pastel, 1891, Christie's, 13 December 2012, lot 42).
Clausen's use of little Miss Grimsdale continued even after his move from Berkshire to Essex in the summer of 1891 - a finished watercolour, Idleness (Private Collection) was sent to the Royal Society of Painters in Watercolours at the end of that year. And as late as 1898 with Noon in the Hayfield, he returned to complete a picture begun around the time of his move (McConkey, 2012, pp. 104, 122-3).
Although painted around 1889-90, A Village Girl remained in the painter's studio until it was given to Richard Crafton Green, an artist friend of the painter, six years later. Crafton Green (1848-1934) was four years older than Clausen. He had studied at Heatherley's Art School and painted flower-pieces, landscapes and figure subjects. He was resident in Saffron Walden at the time of Clausen's move to Essex. At some point in the 1890s he moved to Newport, closer to Widdington, where Clausen had his studio. The circumstances of the gift remain obscure.
KMc.