Sir George Clausen, R.A., R.W.S., R.I.

London, Fine Art Society, spring 1969;
Arthur Rampton Esq.;
Private collection

London, Fine Art Society, Channel Packet, March-April 1969, no.18;
Royal Academy, Bradford Art Galleries and Museums and Tyne and Wear County Council Museums, Sir George Clausen, R.A. 1852-1944, 1980, no.32

STRUCTURE The panel is sound. There is some very minor frame abrasion to the extreme lower left edge and corner. Otherwise in good original condition, clean and ready to hang. UNDER ULTRAVIOLET LIGHT There are no signs of retouching. FRAME Held in a simple wooden frame with very minor chipped paint to the extreme edges. For more information regarding this picture please contact the Victorian & Edwardian Pictures Department on +44 (0)207 293 5718.
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'One saw people doing simple things under good conditions of lighting: and there was always landscape. And nothing was made easy for you: you had to dig out what you wanted.'
(Sir George Clausen, R.A., 'Autobiographical Notes', in Artwork, no.25, spring 1931, p.19)

Kenneth McConkey has suggested that December was painted in the winter of 1882 following Clausen's return from a trip to Quimperlé in Brittany. The picture depicts two field-workers wrapped against the cold trimming turnips in a wintery landscape and relates to a larger painting entitled Winter Work (sold in these rooms, 3 November 1982, lot 37) that Clausen exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1883. In the larger painting the female figure is in a slightly different pose and a further male figure has been added in the background piling up the beets, and a young girl added to the foreground.

December is contemporary with Day Dreams (sold in these rooms for the auction record, 11 December 2007, lot 54) and the watercolour Flora, the Gypsy Flower Seller (sold in these rooms, 7 June 2005, lot 81) which almost certainly depict the same weather-beaten female rustic. The group of pictures painted in the 1880s are notable for their uncompromising naturalism and adherence to the princples of the French art that influenced Clausen during this period. Square-brushed technique and earthy colouring, combined with subjects of strenuous agricultural life, connect these pictures with the work of other British artists who took inspiration from France, such as James Guthrie, John Lavery, Henry Herbert la Thangue and Stanhope Forbes. The man and woman standing opposite one another in a field, with their heads bowed, suggests an influence from Millet's famous L'Angelus which Clausen may have seen illustrated in The Magazine of Art in 1882.

Whilst in residence in London in 1880 Clausen visited the Grosvenor Gallery where he saw a group of works by the French painter, Jules Bastien-Lepage which were a revelation to him. The most significant of these nine pictures was Les Foins (The Hay Harvest) of 1878 (Musée d'Orsay, Paris), a controversial painting that divided opinion at the Grosvenor Gallery. The picture depicts two exhausted labourers sitting at the edge of a field. Unlike earlier French and British painters who had painted idealized images of contented harvesters happily working on the land, Bastien-Lepage presented the hardships of human toil. Many critics reacted harshly against the painting but a  circle of young painters, known as 'a little knot of worshippers', met regularly at the gallery to discuss the merits of this painting. Clausen also exhibited in the same Grosvenor Gallery show with La Pensé and is likely to have been prominent in the group of admirers of Bastien-Lepage's work.

Clausen's encounter with Les Foins was probably a contributory factor in encouraging him to move in 1881 to Childwick Green, near St Albans. He ceased to paint the Hampstead street scenes of elegantly dressed women, to concentrate on a close observation of the daily lives of the Hertfordshire field workers. At Childwick Green; 'Clausen attacked the problem of painting peasants and field workers. His sketchbooks of this time provide a rich record of work in the fields around his home. The faces and habits of the local labourers become as familiar as their seasonal activities.' (Kenneth McConkey, Sir George Clausen, R.A. 1852-1944, 1980, p.29) He took a series of photographs of the labourers dressed in their work-clothes (Royal Photographic Society), one of which was used by Clausen for the figure of the old woman in December.