George Clausen

The artist's father was a Dane by birth, worked as an artist-designer, his mother - a Scot . George Clausen at the age of eighteen began working as a draftsman in a construction company. Between 1867 and 1873, he attended evening classes at the South Kensington School (now the Royal College of Art ). He studied with the artist Edwin Long , who persuaded Clausen to do painting professionally. In his memoirs, which Clausen subsequently published, he wrote that he had received basic technical painting skills at the School of Art. The teachers focused on the work of Frederick Leighton and Jean-Francois Millet , the students admired James Abbott Mac-Neil Whistler , whom they met in Chelsea , although they did not dare to meet in person. Later, Clausen studied in Paris with William Bouguereau and Tony Robert-Fleury at the Julian Academy , but studies here lasted only five months ^{[1] [2]} .

George Clausen has exhibited his paintings at Burlington House since the late 1970s; mostly they were pictures of rural life and landscapes. Critics noted the sincerity and observation of the young artist ^[3] .

Clausen was active in teaching. Contemporaries noted the high level of his classes with students, argued that young radical students attended classes at the school of the Royal Academy only in order to be able to communicate with Clausen ^[4] . In 1906, George Clausen published "Six Lectures on Painting", where he used the experience of his classes with students. He also owns the book "Goals and Ideals in Art." The artist's work was highly appreciated and widely accepted by his contemporaries. Clausen became one of the founders of the New English Art Club in 1886. In 1895 he became a member of the Royal Academy of Arts , and in 1906 - an academician. In 1927 he was knighted. George Clausen died in 1944 ^[1] .

George Clausen was married (his wife Agnes Clausen was depicted in some of her husband’s paintings). The family had a son, Arthur George Clausen (Dick, was married to Annie Katherine Kent) ^[5] and two daughters - Margaret Mary (Meg, the eldest, she graduated from the prestigious Regent Street Polytechnic , became the wife of the artist and book illustrator Thomas Derrick ^[6] ) and Catherine Francis (Kitty, the youngest, was born in 1886, she married the Irish architect, yachtsman and traveler Conor O'Brien, died in 1936 ^{[7] [8]} ). The artist repeatedly depicted his daughters in paintings and etchings (“Little Margaret” canvas, 1891-1892, where girls are depicted together with her mother, “Student”, “Two girls sort roses”, etchings “Little Margaret”, “Little Meg”, 1892 ) ^[9] .

Of the three children of the artist, only the youngest daughter was professionally engaged in fine arts ^[10] . A number of her graphic works are in the collection of the British Museum ^[11] .

In early youth, the artist was influenced by the Hague School of Painting and Jacques-Joseph Tissot (in the painting “The Flower Girl in Trafalgar Square ”, 1879, Clausen even captured Kathleen Newton , who was a permanent model and the Muse of the French artist), in his the works were dominated by urban sketches; Clausen was greatly impressed by a trip to Holland (Red Brick Houses and Minaret , 1879; Mass in a fishing village in Zuderze Bay, Holland, 1880). Then Clausen became interested in the works of Millet, Jean Batista, Camille Corot , Edgar Degas and Edouard Manet . After marriage in 1881, Clausen and his family made the seemingly contemporaries decision to leave London to live and work in the countryside. Art critics noted during this period the “monastic severity” of his images, wrote that he was attracted by “marginal characters”, and he belongs to the “school of deformities” (the characters of the artist’s paintings were even compared to monkeys, noting their low nostrils and plump curved lips), recognized the anti-bourgeois pathos of his paintings. The artist made sketches of his paintings from life at the height of the field work ^[12] .

For some time he was fond of Jules Bastien-Lepage’s naturalism (between 1888 and 1892). In 1889, the artist visited the World Exhibition in Paris, where Clausen himself received a silver medal, and he was also able to see here many paintings by Bastienne-Lepage. In the Tate Gallery is a picture of Clausen 1889 "The Girl at the Gates", created under the direct influence of the French artist. Clausen painted this picture in the village of Cookham Dean in Berkshire , where he lived. The model for the woman standing at the gate was Mary Baldwin. She was a resident of this village and worked as a nanny in the family of Clausen ^[13] .

Clausen's painting “The Village Girl (Rose Grimsdale)” (she briefly exhibited in Russia at the Moscow residence of the British Ambassador to mark the opening of the exhibition “Pre-Raphaelite: Victorian Avant-Garde” at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts ^[14] ), created under Bastien's strong influence - Leage, became one of the top lots at Christie's auction in 2013 with a preliminary estimate of 200,000 - 300,000 pounds sterling . The model for the picture was Rose Grimsdale ( eng. Rose Grimsdale ). In the art of that time, her name was one of the symbols of pre-Raphaelite creativity. She was painted by Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Edward Burne-Jones , for contemporaries Clausen Rose was associated just with the awakened princess on the canvases of Bern-Jones (the Sleeping Beauty series for the interiors of the Bascot-Manor estate). A few years after the creation of Clausen's paintings of Rose Grimsdale, James Abbott Mac-Neil Whistler created The Little Rose of Lyme Regis (1895, currently in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts ) ^[15] . Rose Grimsdale became a model artist at eleven or twelve years old and remained his model during the entire 1890s (“Little Coquette”, “Girl's Head”, 1890, “Brown Eyes”, “Little Rose”, 1889, “Village Girl (Rose Grimsdale) ”,“ Idleness ”(or“ Rose in white in the orchard ”), etching“ Girl's head ”) ^[16] .

In the late period of creativity Clausen was strongly influenced by the classical art of ancient Greece, as well as Renaissance artists, while he particularly admired the works of Rafael Santi . He himself had already been living in London for a long time, undertaking only separate trips to the countryside for work in the open air , since the 1920s his rural landscapes are full of peace, social motives disappear. Urban sketches, a large number of still lifes, portraits of representatives of high society and big business reappear in his work (“William Henry Clegg, Director of the Bank of England”, 1933?) And even some works on scenes from medieval history of England (“The English read , 1927) ^[17] .

The most famous picture of the artist. She shows the grief of a young woman (daughter of Clausen), who learned about the death of her fiance during the First World War . The painting was created by George Clausen in 1916 ^[18] .

• Works of the early period of creativity
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  George Clausen. Mass in a fishing village in Zuderze Bay, Holland , circa 1880

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  George Clausen. Asylum Heywood, King Lynn, 1881

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  George Clausen. Girl's Head, 1884

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  George Clausen. Scare the birds, 1887

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  George Clausen. Plowing, 1889

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  George Clausen. Country Girl (Rose Grimesdale), 1896

• Works mature and late period of creativity
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  George Clausen. Grain pickers return, 1908

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  George Clausen. Student (portrait of the artist's eldest daughter), 1908

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  George Clausen. Weeping youth , 1916

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  George Clausen. Military factory in Woolwich arsenal, 1918

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  George Clausen. November morning, 1922

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  George Clausen. Henry Festing Jones, 1923

• Gibson, Frank. The Etchings and Lithographs of George Clausen, RA (English) // The Print Collector's Quarterly: Journal. - 1921. - July ( vol. 8 , no. 2 ). - P. 203, 212 .
• Gibson, Frank. Notes to Catalog of Etchings by George Clausen (Eng.) // The Print Collector's Quarterly: Journal. - 1921. - December ( vol. 8 , no. 4 ). - P. 433 .
• McConkey, Kenneth. George Clausen, The Rustic Image. - London: The Fine Art Society, 2012. - 88 p. - ISBN 9-781-9070-5216-3.
• Rutherson, Albert (editor). Contemporary British Artists: George Clausen. - Ernest Benn Ltd, 1923.
• Sir George Clausen, RA 1852-1944. Catalog of an exhibition held in Bradford, London, Bristol and Newcastle upon Tyne in 1980. - Bradford Art Gallery, 1980.

• Pictures of the artist (Neopr.) . Artchive. The appeal date is April 23, 2017.