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Lot Essay
In 1876 George Clausen exhibited at the Royal Academy for the first time with a picture entitled High Mass at a Fishing Village on the Zuider Zee (1876, Nottingham Castle Museum, see D. Bates, 'George Clausen ARA', The Studio, V, 1895, p. 4; quoted in K. McConkey, George Clausen and the Picture of English Rural Life, Glasgow, 2012, p. 23).
Having spent the previous summer travelling in the Low Countries, this was carefully reconstructed from studies made on the spot. His travelling companion, Dewey Bates, recollected that Clausen had once encountered a crowd of penitents kneeling at the door of a church - a sight one would not see in London. Clausen and Bates visited Monnickendam, Edam, Volendam and the island of Marken in the summer of 1875. Clausen's first trip to Holland was in 1874. Being already familiar with such scenes of rustic piety in the work of Alphonse Legros and Léon Lhermitte, he resolved to paint it. He must have been surprised however, when the critic of The Times and The Graphic, Tom Taylor, praised his picture and jumped to the conclusion that this was the work of 'a very clever Dutch painter, hitherto only known in this country by two drawings exhibited at the Dudley Gallery' (The Times, 22 May 1876, p. 6).
One of these exhibits was probably the present highly finished watercolour. Like the Royal Academy oil, it too was painted from studies produced while he and Bates were staying at the Café Spaander, the only hotel in Volendam, and one renowned for its artist-guests. Although the church in this fishing village has not been specifically identified, the style of architecture and traditional costumes are characteristic of the region. The cartouche carries momento mori - a skull, crossed bones, an hourglass and behind the skull a scythe, as well as the Latin inscription 'HIC META DOLORIS', literally translated as 'Here (God's house) changeth suffering'. Although the figures do not look particularly poor, the side-door of Dutch churches was commonly used by paupers; its portal carrying the promise that their suffering would eventually be ended by God's grace.
Clausen's command of detail in the present watercolour demonstrates a precocity comparable to that of the High Mass. Indeed consonance between the two works extends beyond the architecture and the costumes to the blond infant at the rear of the penitents who appears to be the same child as that in the present picture. Significance must also be attached to the fact that here, in one of his earliest pictures, the artist looks beyond the narrow borders of the British art world and embraces an expansive internationalism that in later years, following his encounter with Bastien-Lepage, would become the noteworthy characteristic of his work. However in Coming out of church, Volendam, Zuider Zee we are given the first exciting glimpse of one of the most remarkable talents of his generation.
KMc.
Having spent the previous summer travelling in the Low Countries, this was carefully reconstructed from studies made on the spot. His travelling companion, Dewey Bates, recollected that Clausen had once encountered a crowd of penitents kneeling at the door of a church - a sight one would not see in London. Clausen and Bates visited Monnickendam, Edam, Volendam and the island of Marken in the summer of 1875. Clausen's first trip to Holland was in 1874. Being already familiar with such scenes of rustic piety in the work of Alphonse Legros and Léon Lhermitte, he resolved to paint it. He must have been surprised however, when the critic of The Times and The Graphic, Tom Taylor, praised his picture and jumped to the conclusion that this was the work of 'a very clever Dutch painter, hitherto only known in this country by two drawings exhibited at the Dudley Gallery' (The Times, 22 May 1876, p. 6).
One of these exhibits was probably the present highly finished watercolour. Like the Royal Academy oil, it too was painted from studies produced while he and Bates were staying at the Café Spaander, the only hotel in Volendam, and one renowned for its artist-guests. Although the church in this fishing village has not been specifically identified, the style of architecture and traditional costumes are characteristic of the region. The cartouche carries momento mori - a skull, crossed bones, an hourglass and behind the skull a scythe, as well as the Latin inscription 'HIC META DOLORIS', literally translated as 'Here (God's house) changeth suffering'. Although the figures do not look particularly poor, the side-door of Dutch churches was commonly used by paupers; its portal carrying the promise that their suffering would eventually be ended by God's grace.
Clausen's command of detail in the present watercolour demonstrates a precocity comparable to that of the High Mass. Indeed consonance between the two works extends beyond the architecture and the costumes to the blond infant at the rear of the penitents who appears to be the same child as that in the present picture. Significance must also be attached to the fact that here, in one of his earliest pictures, the artist looks beyond the narrow borders of the British art world and embraces an expansive internationalism that in later years, following his encounter with Bastien-Lepage, would become the noteworthy characteristic of his work. However in Coming out of church, Volendam, Zuider Zee we are given the first exciting glimpse of one of the most remarkable talents of his generation.
KMc.