DOI Heft:
Nr. 228 (February 1916)
DOI Artikel:Reddie, Arthur: Mr. Clausen's work in water-colour
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.43460#0351
Mr. Clausen's IVork in IVater-Colour
“ LANDORE ”
BY GEORGE CLAUSEN, R.A.
enjoy for their own sake these rapid notes in water-
colour, these subtle sketches capturing so impres-
sively the transitory effects of wind or rain, of
sunlight or shade, of morning mist or twilight haze,
they have also another interest in that they help
us to appreciate that s'ncere study and deep
probing after truth which enables the artist to
preserve in his elaborate oil paintings so much of
the immediate aspect of the moment in Nature, and
so great a sense of sun and atmosphere. It has
been the writer’s privilege to be permitted to look
through a very great number of drawings, chalk
studies and water-colours in Mr. Clausen’s studio.
To see all the scholarly preparation that is gone
through, all the different studies of a figure or of
some special pose, a detail of a tree, or the con-
struction of those fine old barns of which Mr.
Clausen has made a special study but which,
unhappily, are now fast disappearing from our
countryside; and then the numberless impressions
in water-colour of rickyards in sunlight, of trees and
fields bathed in the misty atmosphere that follows
rain—what a world of interest there is in them,
and how intimate is the revelation they afford of
the artist’s genius at work 1 One cannot help recalling
what the artist himself said in one of his Royal
Academy lectures : “ We know the finished paint-
ings of the great artists fairly well, but their
drawings help us to understand them by showing
the first steps, and, one may say, the scaffolding by
228
means of which their work was built up.” And
how fascinating, too, might it not be to trace in an
article, step by step, the gradual construction of a
picture, to see reproduced the varied stages, not of
the actual canvas, but of the artist’s own develop-
ment of his idea as exemplified in the preliminary
drawings and studies in which he gathers together
all the facts regarding his subject—more facts,
indeed, than his finished work shall embody—so
that in his final selection of essentials there shall
be nothing lacking from the full, ordered and
satisfying suggestion, alike in colour and form, of
the subject as it appears to him. But this would
lead us away from the matter in hand. These few
water-colours of Mr. Clausen afford us a glimpse
into that indefatigable studentship which is the
life work of the truly sincere artist enamoured of
his work. The mysteries of Nature, the glory of
the sunlight, the wonderful opalescence of the
humid atmosphere in these islands of ours—all
this is a book in which he never tires of reading;
it is a country which always holds fresh secrets and
contains new revelations and discoveries for the
earnest explorer. And to the painter who is thus
preoccupied with adding to the sum total of his
knowledge, there can come no staleness or tired-
ness in his art, and in his work he will retain, as
Mr. Clausen seems to do, ever the character of
perpetual youth.
Arthur Reddie.
“ LANDORE ”
BY GEORGE CLAUSEN, R.A.
enjoy for their own sake these rapid notes in water-
colour, these subtle sketches capturing so impres-
sively the transitory effects of wind or rain, of
sunlight or shade, of morning mist or twilight haze,
they have also another interest in that they help
us to appreciate that s'ncere study and deep
probing after truth which enables the artist to
preserve in his elaborate oil paintings so much of
the immediate aspect of the moment in Nature, and
so great a sense of sun and atmosphere. It has
been the writer’s privilege to be permitted to look
through a very great number of drawings, chalk
studies and water-colours in Mr. Clausen’s studio.
To see all the scholarly preparation that is gone
through, all the different studies of a figure or of
some special pose, a detail of a tree, or the con-
struction of those fine old barns of which Mr.
Clausen has made a special study but which,
unhappily, are now fast disappearing from our
countryside; and then the numberless impressions
in water-colour of rickyards in sunlight, of trees and
fields bathed in the misty atmosphere that follows
rain—what a world of interest there is in them,
and how intimate is the revelation they afford of
the artist’s genius at work 1 One cannot help recalling
what the artist himself said in one of his Royal
Academy lectures : “ We know the finished paint-
ings of the great artists fairly well, but their
drawings help us to understand them by showing
the first steps, and, one may say, the scaffolding by
228
means of which their work was built up.” And
how fascinating, too, might it not be to trace in an
article, step by step, the gradual construction of a
picture, to see reproduced the varied stages, not of
the actual canvas, but of the artist’s own develop-
ment of his idea as exemplified in the preliminary
drawings and studies in which he gathers together
all the facts regarding his subject—more facts,
indeed, than his finished work shall embody—so
that in his final selection of essentials there shall
be nothing lacking from the full, ordered and
satisfying suggestion, alike in colour and form, of
the subject as it appears to him. But this would
lead us away from the matter in hand. These few
water-colours of Mr. Clausen afford us a glimpse
into that indefatigable studentship which is the
life work of the truly sincere artist enamoured of
his work. The mysteries of Nature, the glory of
the sunlight, the wonderful opalescence of the
humid atmosphere in these islands of ours—all
this is a book in which he never tires of reading;
it is a country which always holds fresh secrets and
contains new revelations and discoveries for the
earnest explorer. And to the painter who is thus
preoccupied with adding to the sum total of his
knowledge, there can come no staleness or tired-
ness in his art, and in his work he will retain, as
Mr. Clausen seems to do, ever the character of
perpetual youth.
Arthur Reddie.