Sir George Clausen: Working in Multiple Media

George Clausen - The Mowers - 1892 - Oil on canvas, 97 x 76 cm - Usher Gallery, London (click photo for larger image)From the 1880s on, Britain's rural plein-air naturalism was tightened by the example of Bastien-Lepage and the Barbizon school. In 1883, British painter, Sir George Clausen (1852-1944), was in Paris for several months, working under Bouguereau at the Académie Julian. He met Bastien-Lepage, and then followed his own predilection for simple, rustic scenes. Rural subjects remained to the fore in his work, and from the 1890s on he expressed them in his own version of Impressionist techniques. His post-Millet view of nature and farm work can be seen in The Mowers, featured here, which also exhibits effects of color and light reminiscent of Monet. Clausen was proficient in oil and watercolor, etching, mezzotint, dry point and, occasionally, lithography. He was knighted in 1927.