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

Commissioned in December 1888 by Knoedler, New York;
London, Sotheby's, 14 May 1985, lot 52;
London, Richard Green, by 1986;
Private collection

London, Christie's, The New English Art Club Centenary Exhibition, 27 August - 17 September 1986, no. 9

Kenneth McConkey, Sir George Clausen, R.A., 1852-1944, exhibition catalogue for Bradford Art Galleries and Museums and Tyne and Wear County Council Museums, 1980, see under notes and illustrations 52 and 53, pp.48-49

STRUCTURE The canvas has been relined and is in good stable condition. CATALOGUE COMPARISON The illustration is a good, accurate representation of the work. PAINT SURFACE The paint surface is in good, clean condition with a light even varnish. There are a few lines of craquelure to the areas of thick impasto in the sky. These are stable and do not interfere with the compositional structure. ULTRAVIOLET UV light reveals a few small flecks of retouching to frame abrasions off the top edge and upper right edge. The rest of the work is in good original condition with no further sign of restoration or retouching. FRAME Held in a fine, plaster gilt frame in fair condition.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

According to his account book, on 29 July 1888, George Clausen received a commission from Knoedler's in New York to paint Planting a Tree for a fee of £75. The completed picture was delivered to his London dealer, Goupil, for shipment, exactly five months later on 29 December, when payment arrangements were noted; Clausen noted for instance, '29 Dec 88 'Took to Goupil's the picture for Mr Knoedler "Planting a Tree" - This is to my credit £75', indicating that no commission should be charged by Goupil. Other details remain obscure. We do not know the identity of the eventual American collector, or if the subject matter was suggested by Clausen, Knoedler or the 'mysterious' collector. We may assume that after Planting a Tree was shipped to the United States, Clausen never saw it again. Within a year he made a further sale to an American collector, with The Ploughboy, 1888 (unlocated). Certainly in the depiction of two rustics at work in an open Berkshire landscape the painter was not stepping out of character. Back in 1882, in a watercolour, The Return from the Fields, he hit upon the theme of man and boy working together on early winter tasks such as hedging and wood-thinning. Throughout the next few years, in drawings and etchings, this subject was refined until in 1885, The End of a Winter's Day (FIG 1) was submitted to the Grosvenor Gallery.

By this time, Clausen had exhausted the motifs at Childwick Green in Hertfordshire and, remaining within a forty mile radius of London, he and his growing family moved to the fertile flood-plane of the Thames at Cookham Dene in Berkshire; by the time Planting a Tree was painted, Agnes Mary and George Clausen had three children. This provided new settings in which to explore the rural naturalism with which he was now firmly associated. Having allied himself with radicals of the New English Art Club, such as Henry Herbert La Thangue, he took a leading role in arguing for reform in art education and greater liberalism in exhibition selection at the Royal Academy. Like his mentors in the Paris Salon - Jules Bastien-Lepage, Léon Lhermitte, Julien Dupré and others - he continued the task of modernizing the rural themes of Jean-François Millet and the village in Berkshire provided an ideal situation for this.

The less familiar activities of stone-picking, bird-scaring, hedging and tree-planting now replaced sowing and harvesting. In Planting a Tree, for instance, Millet's Le Greffeur, 1855 (Private collection, USA) has been overhauled and a keen observation applied to the simple task of placing a sapling. Bastien-Lepage had insisted upon strict adherence to visual facts, combining a Pre-Raphaelite eye for surface detail, with careful notation of spatial recession and prevailing atmospheric conditions. This meant, in Clausen's words, published as he was painting Planting a Tree, that 'all his personages are placed before us in the most satisfying completeness, without the appearance of artifice, but as they live: and without comment, as far as possible on the author's part' (George Clausen, 'Bastien-Lepage and Modern Realism', Scottish Art Review, vol 1, 1888, p. 114).

To achieve this sense of completeness required exhaustive study. The same figures would be observed from different angles, performing different tasks. We may assume for instance, that the boy in the present picture had posed earlier in Bird-Scaring, FIG 2) and it is possible that the man had previously modelled as The Woodman, 1885 (unlocated). A drawing, related to The Woodman or the present composition, inscribed 'Old Lawrence' is contained in Plymouth Art Gallery. Other closely related works include The Woodman's Boy, c. 1885 (sold Sotheby's 19 June 1996, lot 8) which was owned by Clausen's follower, John Pedder. Clausen's objectivity was as clear in the notation of the distant field pattern as it was in detail of the older peasant's smock. Oil and ink studies differ from the present work in significant ways. The oil sketch (FIG 3) for instance contains a third figure leaning on his spade, looking on, while the farm buildings in this and a related drawing have been replaced by an open landscape in the finished work. Clausen's topography suggests that tree planting in this case is to provide a screen for land that may have been converted to domestic produce as an allotment. Here, as in the oil sketch, he picks out the vivid scarlet scarves of both figures which throw the dull browns of their clothing into relief. As in classic canvases such as The Stone Pickers, 1887 (Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne) and Ploughing, 1889 (Aberdeen Art Gallery), details of heads and hands are conscientiously observed.

Changes in the final realization of the work take it further from its source in Millet. Clausen was involved in the current debates about painting and photography. As a friend of the Naturalistic photographer, Peter Henry Emerson, he wrote letters commenting upon Emerson's work and ideas. At times, it could be claimed that Emerson was also re-staging Millet's compositions and his results, in At the Grindstone, A Suffolk Farmyard (FIG 4) for instance, are likely to have appealed to the painter. However, having taken his own 'unposed' photographs Clausen was concerned at the degree of artifice necessary to give the sense of movement. Painting, with its selective focus and shorthand lapses was able to do this, and in Planting a Tree he worked to give the idea that while the man holds the sapling still, the boy with his spade is caught in the middle of the action. In a convincing way, we see the beginning and end of a process.

Whilst he was completing this Knoedler commission, Clausen also began work on Ploughing, (FIG 5, Aberdeen Art Gallery), a major canvas destined for the Grosvenor Gallery in the spring of 1889. At the same time, smaller portraits of local Cookham characters such as A Little Child and The Miller's Man, (both Leeds City Art Galleries) were delivered to Goupil. Becoming financially successful, Clausen could indulge his own artistic interests, acquiring Millet etchings. We do not know which ones, or indeed how frequently they were consulted. However, whilst the memory of Millet is clear in Planting a Tree, so too is the close observation of his rustics and the well-felt winter light. And we are left with the sense of that 'most satisfying completeness' which characterises the best plein air naturalism of late nineteenth century.  

We are grateful to Kenneth McConkey for preparing this footnote.