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Lot Essay
Clausen's profile portrait of an unidentified Dutch girl remains an enigma. At first glance the picture reprises the format set with A Girl in Black (fig. 1, 1913, Leeds City Art Galleries) and Lily, 1916 (see lot 98) - a head-and-shoulders study of a blonde girl cloaked in black. However unlike earlier head studies The Dutch Girl is shown in profile. While her contemplative demeanor was a racial characteristic described by Hussey as 'stolid', it was equally the case that, 'in all Mr Clausen's pictures, the figure is well placed on the canvas; and that, where the portrait is painted against a plain ground, is the first consideration and difficulty the artist has to face. The use made of the square cut of the collar in the designing of this picture is an inspiration. Had the dress followed down the line of the neck, the pattern would have been ordinary and even banal' (D. Hussey, loc. cit.).
Abstract considerations apart, restraint was precisely the feeling Clausen wished to summon at this critical point in the Great War when two of his sons were serving their country at sea. The young woman's composure may also have reminded him of the fisherwomen of Volendam and Marken that he had painted back in the 1870s (see lot 66). Although she was not explicitly named in his account book, it is likely that this particular Dutch girl is Frieda (c. 1915, National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh), the model who had also posed for the artist's sombre anti-war canvases, Renaissance (destroyed) and Youth Mourning (Imperial War Museum). (For reference to these works see K. McConkey, George Clausen and the Picture of English Rural Life, Glasgow, 2012, pp. 166-170. It is likely that Frieda is indeed a fragment retrieved from the destroyed work, Renaissance).
Stylistically, works of this period, with their dry, chalky pigment and semi-allegorical intent, recall those of Puvis de Chavannes, a painter much admired for his Florentine historicism. Awareness of Puvis's importance began at the turn of the century and grew in Clausen's work after his return to London in 1905 when he was no longer in continuous contact with the Essex landscape.
However there was something reductive about the Dutch girl's personality that may also have prompted thoughts of Vermeer, the artist who was to become the subject of Clausen's Charlton Lecture in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1921 (Ibid., pp. 181-3). He admired the Dutch master because he expressed 'simple human feeling', concentrated on métier, on abstract arrangement and domestic subject matter, and was not a 'public entertainer' as some contemporary painters were increasingly becoming. Nevertheless back in 1917, this retreat was not entirely possible and Clausen was obliged to take a stand. He was producing lithographs of 'Britain's Efforts and Ideals in the Great War' and would shortly be enrolled among the Official War Artists to paint the interior of Woolwich Arsenal, one of his most remarkable achievements. Such public performances were necessary in time of war, but they were only made possible by a lifetime spent in humbler circumstances - similar to those quiet days in the studio when he painted the young woman from Holland.
Although he notes in his account book for 1 May 1917 that The Dutch Girl was sent to the Academy priced at £100, the entry is crossed out presumably because on the same day Clausen received a cheque for the picture from D.Y. Cameron who had been instructed by Stephen Mitchell to acquire it. Mitchell went on to acquire Winter Morning in London (unlocated) when it was shown at the Glasgow Institute later in the year.
KMc.
Abstract considerations apart, restraint was precisely the feeling Clausen wished to summon at this critical point in the Great War when two of his sons were serving their country at sea. The young woman's composure may also have reminded him of the fisherwomen of Volendam and Marken that he had painted back in the 1870s (see lot 66). Although she was not explicitly named in his account book, it is likely that this particular Dutch girl is Frieda (c. 1915, National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh), the model who had also posed for the artist's sombre anti-war canvases, Renaissance (destroyed) and Youth Mourning (Imperial War Museum). (For reference to these works see K. McConkey, George Clausen and the Picture of English Rural Life, Glasgow, 2012, pp. 166-170. It is likely that Frieda is indeed a fragment retrieved from the destroyed work, Renaissance).
Stylistically, works of this period, with their dry, chalky pigment and semi-allegorical intent, recall those of Puvis de Chavannes, a painter much admired for his Florentine historicism. Awareness of Puvis's importance began at the turn of the century and grew in Clausen's work after his return to London in 1905 when he was no longer in continuous contact with the Essex landscape.
However there was something reductive about the Dutch girl's personality that may also have prompted thoughts of Vermeer, the artist who was to become the subject of Clausen's Charlton Lecture in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1921 (Ibid., pp. 181-3). He admired the Dutch master because he expressed 'simple human feeling', concentrated on métier, on abstract arrangement and domestic subject matter, and was not a 'public entertainer' as some contemporary painters were increasingly becoming. Nevertheless back in 1917, this retreat was not entirely possible and Clausen was obliged to take a stand. He was producing lithographs of 'Britain's Efforts and Ideals in the Great War' and would shortly be enrolled among the Official War Artists to paint the interior of Woolwich Arsenal, one of his most remarkable achievements. Such public performances were necessary in time of war, but they were only made possible by a lifetime spent in humbler circumstances - similar to those quiet days in the studio when he painted the young woman from Holland.
Although he notes in his account book for 1 May 1917 that The Dutch Girl was sent to the Academy priced at £100, the entry is crossed out presumably because on the same day Clausen received a cheque for the picture from D.Y. Cameron who had been instructed by Stephen Mitchell to acquire it. Mitchell went on to acquire Winter Morning in London (unlocated) when it was shown at the Glasgow Institute later in the year.
KMc.