Filling sacks

Sir George Clausen (1852-1944) was an English artist working in oil and watercolour, etching, mezzotint. drypoint and occasionally lithographs. He was knighted in 1927.

He was the son of a decorative artist of Danish descent. From 1867 to 1873, he attended the design classes at the South Kensington Schools in London with great success. He then worked in the studio of Edwin Long, RA, and subsequently in Paris under Bouguereau and Tony Robert-Fleury at the Academie Julian. He was an admirer of the naturalism of the painter Jules Bastien-Lepage about whom he wrote in 1888 and 1892, though he moved beyond his style.

Clausen became one of the foremost modern painters of landscape and of peasant life, influenced to a certain extent by the Impressionists, with whom he shared the view that light is the real subject of landscape art.  His pictures excel in rendering the appearance of things under flecking outdoor sunlight, or in the shady shelter of a barn or stable. His Girl at the Gate was acquired by the Chantrey Trustees and is now at Tate Britain. Te Papa's oil painting <em>The haymakers</em> (1903) is almost equally significant.

Clausen was a founding member of the New English Art Club in 1886. In 1895, he was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy and a full Academician in 1906. As Professor of Painting at the Royal Academy he gave a memorable series of lectures to the students of the Schools, published as Six Lectures on Painting (1904) and Aims and Ideals in Art (1906).

Clausen was an official war artist during World War I. During the war his daughter's fiancé was killed; this event may have inspired his painting, Youth Mourning which shows a distressed young woman mourning in a desolate landscape (Imperial War Museum, London). Clausen also contributed six lithographs on the theme Making Guns for the Government published print portfolio Britain's Efforts and Ideals. In 1921 Clausen was an original member of the Society of Graphic Art and showed his work in their first exhibition.

Above all, Clausen is famed as a painter of English rural life, both of landscape and labourers, and conveys a sympathetic attitude to the dignity of labour. We see this both in the reflective <em>The haymakers</em>, with its figures showing the three ages of man and hinting at the Great Reaper of death, and in this etching, <em>Filling sacks.</em> It was first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1912, accompanied by an earlier stage in the labouring process, <em>Dressing wheat</em>.

The two men are filling wheat, from which the chaff has been removed, into sacks. It will then be loaded onto a wagon and taken to the mill. The setting is almost more significant than the men - this is the barn at Deer's Farm, Clavering, Essex. Indeed, the etching is sometimes known as <em>The barn at Deer's Farm</em>. In 1908 Clausen had addressed a similar theme in his Royal Academy diploma (presentation) painting, <em>Interior of an old barn</em>. Clausen hints at the drudgery of the two men, and the atmospheric barn setting has definite parallels with the location of the Biblical theme, the Adoration of the Shepherds, without being overtly religious.

See:

'George Clausen', <em>Wikipedia</em>, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Clausen

Kenneth McConkey, <em>George Clausen: The Rustic Image</em>, London: Fine Art Society, 2012, https://thefineartsociety.com/usr/documents/exhibitions/list_of_works_url/71/clausen-catalogue.pdf

Dr Mark Stocker   Curator Historical International Art   April 2018