Artist of the day, June 4, Sir George Clausen, English painter,

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

George Clausen was born in London, 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 Académie Julian. He was an admirer of the naturalism of the painter Jules Bastien-Lepage about whom he wrote in 1888 and 1892.

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.

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. Clausen also contributed 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.

Sir George Clausen

03 Self Portrait

1852, breton girl carrying a jug

1876, High mass at a fishing village

1878,  The Harvest of the Sea

1879, A Woman with a Key

1881, View of a Lady in Pink standing in a Cornfield

1882,  Head of a Peasant Woman

1882, In the Orchard

1882, The Gleaners

1882, The Return to the Fields

1883 Winter Work

1883, Day dreams

1883, Flora, the gypsy flower seller

1884, Head of a Peasant Boy

1885, The Shepherdess

1887, Bird Scaring

1887, The Stone Pickers

1888, A Ploughboy

1888, Planting A Tree

1888, Portrait Of A Young Girl

1889, A Girls Head

1889, Ploughing

1889, The Girl at the Gate

1890, Head of a young girl

1890, Sheepfold at early morning

1891, Brown Eyes

1895, The Farmer's Boy

1896, Bird Scaring

1897,  Noon in the Hay field

1898, The End of a Long Day,

1899,  The Allotment Garden

1900, The Gap in the Hedge

1900, Tulips & Narcissi in a Glass Vase

1903, Dusk

1904, A Frosty March Morning

1904, Gleaners Coming Home

1904, Gleaners Coming Home

1904, The Barn Door

1907, The Red Hat

1908, The Gleaners Returning

1910. Summer Night, St. John's Wood

1911, The Barn at Deers Farm

1916, Youth Mourning

1917, Making Guns: The Furnace

1917, Making Guns: The Great Hammer

1917, Making Guns: The Radial Crane

1917, Making Guns: Turning a Big Gun

1923, Rickyard, Morning

1923, The Road, Winter Morning

1924, Sunrise in September

1937, The Garden

1940, My Back Garden

1940, Still Life with Michaelmas Daisies and Cornflowers in a Jug