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Lot Essay
While he never abandoned pictures of fieldworkers, by 1914 Clausen had established a reputation in a number of other important genres. Although he left society portraiture to others, he was regularly called upon to paint portraits of friends and committee colleagues. Living in London he also started to show evocative pictures of the deserted streets and back gardens of St John’s Wood. However, the most striking and unusual paintings produced during these years up to the Great War were classical nudes which commenced with head studies of A Wood Nymph and Little Wild One exhibited in 1910 and 1912 respectively. Not since his early days in Victor Barthe’s life class in Chelsea had he seriously studied the nude. However, in more recent times, on Art Workers’ Guild holidays to Greece and Italy, he had started to collect photographs of Greek and Roman sculpture, and as Professor of Painting at the Royal Academy, he addressed the Schools illustrating his second lecture series with lantern slides of bas-relief fragments from the National Museum in Rome (Lectures, 1913, pp. 144-5; Clausen actually owned a copy after a Tanagra figurine (the artist’s descendants)). He could not but commend the understanding of the human form that these ancient craftsmen exemplified in their work, and while he was not seeking to recreate the classical world as predecessors such as Frederic, Lord Leighton and Lawrence Alma-Tadema had done, or provide the ‘come hither’ attractions that compromised many of their followers, Clausen, like younger contemporaries, struck out for a purity of form that had much in common with the work of Puvis de Chavannes. No other nude of the period conveys these qualities so well as the great Primavera.
By 1914 studies of Dorothy [‘Dolly’] Henry and Lilian Ryan were accumulating in the studio and one pose, that of a girl braiding her hair, particularly appealed. Both models were well-known in London studios at the time and Lilian, the younger of the two, sought Clausen’s advice concerning the artists it was safe to sit for. The picture that emerged for the Royal Academy in that year – epitomizing the springtime beauty of the human form - has less to do with the spirit of Botticelli, than that of the Greek friezes.
The Academy opened during the first week in May and the picture was grudgingly praised by the dyspeptic Times critic who noted that Clausen was not one to look for the ‘evasions’ and shortcuts that characterised Cadogan Cowper’s post-Pre-Raphaelite Lucretia Borgia. ‘Light’ he remarked ‘is used, not as a means of escape from any definite reality, but to heighten the colour of clearly modelled flesh’ (2 May 1914, p. 11). Furthermore, ‘the picture … pleases us with its lucidity and sharpness and because the colour expresses the mood of the artist …’ The Connoisseur concurred, admiring its ‘decorative feeling’ and the ‘refined yet acute modelling’ of the figure' (vol. xxxix, 1914, p. 138).
With some favourable notices, Clausen may well have rested content. However on the 18 May a crowd gathered around the painting and the Suffragette, Maude Kate Smith, under the assumed name of ‘Mary Spencer’, produced a meat cleaver, smashed the picture’s glass and slashed the canvas in two places before she was apprehended by the attendants. It was the third attack of its kind in the Academy.
Coming two months after the more brutal laceration of the Rokeby Venus in the National Gallery Primavera was an obvious target. Although the painter might insist on the chastity of his subject matter, the representation of a naked girl was challenging in a way that a picture of men working in the fields was not. While the artist’s views on women’s suffrage are not recorded, it is likely that with impeccable utopian socialist principles and two grown-up daughters, he would have been sympathetic to the ideals of the Women’s Social and Political Union. Accordingly while he might not condone the attack on works of art, he did not press charges against Smith who, by the time the case was heard, was on hunger strike.
She was sentenced to six months in Holloway Prison but was released early when war was declared at the beginning of August 1914. In this quickly developing catastrophe Clausen simply noted an insurance pay-out of £100, later reduced to £50 when the cost of repairs was known and the incident passed. By 22 June 1914 Primavera was sold to Joseph Lumb, the Huddersfield mill owner, and Clausen presented him with a sketch of Dolly (unlocated) to accompany it.
Undeterred, Lilian continued to sit for Clausen, posing as ‘Lily’ for head studies (see Christie’s, 8 March 1998), and works such as The Sleeper (unlocated) and probably, Youth Mourning (1916, Imperial War Museum). None of these however, had the scale and presence of Primavera, and none captured the innocence of that last springtime before the shadow of war fell over Europe.
KMc.
By 1914 studies of Dorothy [‘Dolly’] Henry and Lilian Ryan were accumulating in the studio and one pose, that of a girl braiding her hair, particularly appealed. Both models were well-known in London studios at the time and Lilian, the younger of the two, sought Clausen’s advice concerning the artists it was safe to sit for. The picture that emerged for the Royal Academy in that year – epitomizing the springtime beauty of the human form - has less to do with the spirit of Botticelli, than that of the Greek friezes.
The Academy opened during the first week in May and the picture was grudgingly praised by the dyspeptic Times critic who noted that Clausen was not one to look for the ‘evasions’ and shortcuts that characterised Cadogan Cowper’s post-Pre-Raphaelite Lucretia Borgia. ‘Light’ he remarked ‘is used, not as a means of escape from any definite reality, but to heighten the colour of clearly modelled flesh’ (2 May 1914, p. 11). Furthermore, ‘the picture … pleases us with its lucidity and sharpness and because the colour expresses the mood of the artist …’ The Connoisseur concurred, admiring its ‘decorative feeling’ and the ‘refined yet acute modelling’ of the figure' (vol. xxxix, 1914, p. 138).
With some favourable notices, Clausen may well have rested content. However on the 18 May a crowd gathered around the painting and the Suffragette, Maude Kate Smith, under the assumed name of ‘Mary Spencer’, produced a meat cleaver, smashed the picture’s glass and slashed the canvas in two places before she was apprehended by the attendants. It was the third attack of its kind in the Academy.
Coming two months after the more brutal laceration of the Rokeby Venus in the National Gallery Primavera was an obvious target. Although the painter might insist on the chastity of his subject matter, the representation of a naked girl was challenging in a way that a picture of men working in the fields was not. While the artist’s views on women’s suffrage are not recorded, it is likely that with impeccable utopian socialist principles and two grown-up daughters, he would have been sympathetic to the ideals of the Women’s Social and Political Union. Accordingly while he might not condone the attack on works of art, he did not press charges against Smith who, by the time the case was heard, was on hunger strike.
She was sentenced to six months in Holloway Prison but was released early when war was declared at the beginning of August 1914. In this quickly developing catastrophe Clausen simply noted an insurance pay-out of £100, later reduced to £50 when the cost of repairs was known and the incident passed. By 22 June 1914 Primavera was sold to Joseph Lumb, the Huddersfield mill owner, and Clausen presented him with a sketch of Dolly (unlocated) to accompany it.
Undeterred, Lilian continued to sit for Clausen, posing as ‘Lily’ for head studies (see Christie’s, 8 March 1998), and works such as The Sleeper (unlocated) and probably, Youth Mourning (1916, Imperial War Museum). None of these however, had the scale and presence of Primavera, and none captured the innocence of that last springtime before the shadow of war fell over Europe.
KMc.