Sir George Clausen, R.A., R.W.S., R.I. 1852-1944

'The water-colours and drawings which he contributes to the various exhibitions of the Royal Society of Painters in Watercolours...seem to open a window through which streams a reviving breeze, clear sunlight, and the fresh smell of the earth.' (The Studio, December 1915, Mr Clausen's Work in Watercolour, pp. 225-226)

The Mowers is a smaller and earlier version of the oil of the same title which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1892 to great applause and is now in the collection at the Usher Gallery in Lincoln. An independent work rather than a study for the oil, this picture differs in significant details, although the principal figures are fundamentally alike.

Clausen became increasingly fascinated by the monumental figure of the mower as a symbol of the heroism of agricultural labour. This series of watercolours and oils was initiated in a group of exhibits produced for the Institute of Painters in Watercolours in the mid 1880s and finds its most dramatic manifestation in later works such as Sons of the Soil of 1901 (National Gallery of Canada), Harvest, In the Bean Field of 1904 (Durban Museum and Art Gallery, South Africa) and The Old Reaper (City of Manchester Art Gallery). His strapping field workers bathed in golden English sunlight simultaneously represent the rural traditions of the past and the modernity of the present. The sweeping act of the scythe through the meadow, suggests the eternal change of the seasons and Man's control of his environment before the age of mass farming in the approaching twentieth century. 

The influence of Millet and Lhermitte is clearly evident in the subject matter of The Mower and the oil version was praised above the great French painter of agricultural life Jules Bastien Lepage 'In Mr Clausen's picture the light wraps the figures and swamps detail; whereas even in Bastien's Potato Gatherer (sic) the evidence of light is weakened by many over-nice differences of tone.' (The Saturday Review, 7 May 1892, pg. 537) Clausen's mower is in stark contrast to William Hamo Thornycroft's famous bronze Mower of 1884 (a version was sold at Sotheby's, 9 April 2003, lot 98) which glorified and sensualised the humble labourer almost to godlike status. Clausen painted the ordinary man, bent with strenuous movement and absorbed in his work, his face hidden and thus his identity generalised. The beauty is found in the shimmer of sunlight across the summer meadow, which The Saturday Review described as 'the very smile of nature...', whilst the movement of the figures adds a modern dimension of kinetic energy. A more conventional depiction of a labourer is The Tired Mower, a watercolour of 1896 (offered at Sotheby's, 26 November 1997, lot 6) in which the reaper is posed in a heroic manner resting against the huge blade of his scythe.

A preparatory pencil sketch at Plymouth Art Gallery appears to relate more closely to the watercolour version than the oil in which a third weary figure has been added to the composition. Another watercolour sketch for The Mowers is known (Sotheby's, 2 March 1988, lot 26). Through this series of preparatory sketches Clausen was careful to study the action of the mower extensively in order to portray a realistic movement. He was therefore annoyed when a correspondent for The Magazine of Art criticised the action in his painting in an article of 1902. He wrote in reply to the criticism with an annotated sketch which explained the movement 'Your correspondent is wrong about my mowers. I have studied the action very carefully, and it is correct. Which leg appears to be forward depends not only on the point of view of the spectator, but on the movement of the action chosen... as a matter of fact he stands with his feet on the ground, evenly facing his work, and going forward with a little shuffling step at each stroke... in my Mowers the movement chosen for the principal figure is the end of the stroke; the second figure is at the beginning of the stroke and has his right leg advanced.' (The Magazine of Art , 1902, pg.279) Clausen continued by condemning Fred Walker's The Harbour of Refuge which The Magazine of Art had praised in comparison for the movement of the mower, 'The Mower is at the beginning of the stroke and is twisted round so far that he would cut a complete circle around him...'