George Clausen and Thomas Derrick

Winter Morning in London

Plate 11, Hussey, op cit. Oil.

Winter Morning in London, 1913

The Stars Coming Out

Plate 10, Hussey, op cit. Oil. “In the possession of E.A.C. McCurdy, Esq.”

The Stars Coming Out, 1912

The Barn at Deer’s Farm

Plate 9, Hussey, op cit. Oil. Here with an apostrophe. Already shown, from a different source, here.

The Barn at Deer’s Farm, 1911

Early Morning in September

Plate 8, Hussey, op cit. Oil. “In the possession of Miss Roberts.”

Early Morning in September, 1910

An Italian Child

Plate 7, Hussey, op cit. Oil.

An Italian Child, 1910

Pause

In process of reassigning categories to make this blog easier to navigate and editing some existing posts and images. Normal service to resume shortly.

A Twilight Interior

Plate 6, Hussey, op cit. Oil. “In the possession of Mrs. Wilson.” Already shown (from a different source) here.

A Twlight Interior, 1909

The Gleaners Returning

Plate 5, Hussey, op cit. Oil. “In the possession of the National Gallery of British Art (Chantrey Collection).”

The Gleaners Returning, 1908

A Winter Morning

Plate 4, Hussey, op cit. Oil. “In the possession of the Manchester City Art Gallery.” I have shown this already (from a different source) here.

A Winter Morning, 1906

Harvest – In the Bean Field

Plate 3, Hussey, op cit. Oil. “In the possession of the Durban Museum and Art Gallery, Natal.”

Harvest – In the Bean Field, 1904

Willow Trees at Sunset

Plate 2, Hussey, op cit. Oil.

Willow Trees at Sunset, 1904

The Barn Door

Plate 1, Hussey, op cit. Oil.

The Barn Door, 1904

GC, 1920

Frontispiece in George Clausen, in Contemporary British Artists series, ed Albert Rutherston, with introductory essay by “D.H.”, Dyneley Hussey, and 34 black and white plates, Ernest Benn, London, 1923; Charles Scribner, New York, 1923. Oil.

Self-portrait, 1920

Four styles

The last four images (if you are viewing posts chronologically) – the three of schoolgirls and The Student – show GC’s very different styles in 1880, 1889, 1909 and (perhaps) 1932.

The best of these pictures, for me, is The Student. It has the fine sobriety which comes into some of his work around 1908-9, which could be said to mark the beginning of late Clausen and even the beginning of the truest Clausen, although for the purpose of the categories shown on the right I take “late” as beginning around 1918. The 1932 picture (if that is the date) is not in that manner: there are no simple divisions into periods.

The market hasn’t yet understood late Clausen, as is shown by the dramatically different prices fetched by pictures in the 1889 style (even more than the 1880 style) compared with the “late” work.

The Student

Here is Meg as a mature student, aged around 24. There can be no doubt that she was the first of our schoolgirls if you compare it with the painting of 20 years earlier. The only colour version I have is low-resolution. I’ll add a colour image later. The space between the artist and her (plaster) model reminds one of an Annunciation.

The Student is the Brighton Museum and Art Gallery in the Royal Pavilion. It was shown at the Royal Academy in 1909. Meg was shown in Twilight: Interior or Reading by Lamplight in the same year. We’ve also met her in The Breakfast Table and in the portrait I call Unfinished Meg.

The Student

Schoolgirls, Haverstock Hill

More schoolgirls, though rather mature ones, with milkmaid and flower-seller, from 1880, at the Yale Center for British Art. This is one of a series of pictures of women in London streets done mainly in 1880 and early 1881, though we see one even in the watercolour Flora of 1883. The series includes Winter Afternoon, London and In the Street, and the major statement in this vein, A Spring Morning, Haverstock Hill. They look straight at us in a dead-pan way, painted by a still single young man. He married in the summer of 1881 and left London. By 1882 the interest would have been entirely with the milkmaid or, in Spring Morning, with the road-diggers.

This picture, like Spring Morning, is good classroom material. What do we see here? What does this picture tell us about Victorian social divisions? Illustrated in Judith Flanders’s The Victorian House, Harper Collins, London, 2003.

Schoolgirls

The Roadside Tree, or Going to School

Clausen isn’t really a painter for galleries. His pictures look better in houses. Even when you think from an illustration that they are going to be large, they often turn out to be small. Whatever its size, this oil at Napier, New Zealand, I presume at the Hawke’s Bay Museum, would look wonderful in a child’s playroom. TD was hardly a gallery artist at all.

I’m not sure of the date of The Roadside Tree. The tree reminds one of his style around 1906 and Building the Rick. The road and the early morning setting suggest the 20s. The schoolgirls look Edwardian – but the one in the white socks looks later. The background promises a hot day, and has some of the spread and serenity of the Wycliffe mural in St Stephen’s Hall. So I’d go for a date in the 20s. The blue circle on the lower left of the photograph indicates damage either to the original picture or the photograph.

Afterthought: this may be the 1932 Royal Academy painting The Road to School. Royal Academy Pictures could confirm that. Done, in that case, around the age of 80. Kenneth McConkey has commented that The Roadside Tree is 50.3 x 60.7 cms.

The Roadside Tree

A Schoolgirl

Back to the late 1880s. This was sold at Christie’s a year or two ago and is the kind of Clausen that fetches the money. I think (not all agree) that this is his daughter Meg (1884-1946), though it might be the only time he showed her as a child outside the family or not in a pure portrait.

A Schoolgirl

The Plough

In private hands. Like a carcass in a desert or a prophecy of the desertion of the land. I’d guess the date as 1891-6. There is an OWCS watercolour of 1894 with this title. Is this that? I remember it from The Fine Art Society as an oil. It looks like an oil, but it’s hard to tell from the image and I don’t have its source. He had experimented with this type of low horizon in a watercolour, The Clover Field, in 1891 (1980, no 71), and it is a feature in many of the later watercolours.

The Plough

Rest

In the Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane. I’ll upgrade the image in due course. I’d guess the date as around 1890, perhaps a little later.

Rest