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Lot Essay
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In April 1896, Clausen played host to Prince Eugen of Sweden at Widdington in Essex. He had moved to the village five years earlier and was still discovering new subject matter in the surrounding fields and villages. One day he took the Prince to a ‘very dirty’ local farmyard and they stood in an old barn which interested him. These impressive, ancient structures in many instances dated back to the Middle Ages. ‘It has the effect of a church’, he later wrote to the Prince, ‘and some mysterious rite going on’ (Kenneth McConkey, George Clausen and the Picture of English rural life, London, 2012, pp. 118, 124-7). The ‘mysterious rite’ could be threshing, winnowing or milling grain. The first of these processes was often carried out by the open barn door so that a through-draught might blow away the chaff. This is clearly seen in a small canvas, The Barn Door, c. 1909 (Private Collection). The artist would essentially work in the dark on such occasions, observing the labourers in a halo of light. In the present instance they appear to be loading grain into sacks – a motif to which the painter returned in a memorable oil painting, several watercolours and a popular etching. KMc.
In April 1896, Clausen played host to Prince Eugen of Sweden at Widdington in Essex. He had moved to the village five years earlier and was still discovering new subject matter in the surrounding fields and villages. One day he took the Prince to a ‘very dirty’ local farmyard and they stood in an old barn which interested him. These impressive, ancient structures in many instances dated back to the Middle Ages. ‘It has the effect of a church’, he later wrote to the Prince, ‘and some mysterious rite going on’ (Kenneth McConkey, George Clausen and the Picture of English rural life, London, 2012, pp. 118, 124-7). The ‘mysterious rite’ could be threshing, winnowing or milling grain. The first of these processes was often carried out by the open barn door so that a through-draught might blow away the chaff. This is clearly seen in a small canvas, The Barn Door, c. 1909 (Private Collection). The artist would essentially work in the dark on such occasions, observing the labourers in a halo of light. In the present instance they appear to be loading grain into sacks – a motif to which the painter returned in a memorable oil painting, several watercolours and a popular etching. KMc.