Lot Essay
Throughout the 1930s, Clausen's gardens at 61 Carlton Hill, St. John's Wood and Hillside, near Dunmow in Essex provided some of his most satisfactory motifs. Here the aged painter could peacefully contemplate the cool colours of morning and the golden glow of afternoon sunlight. One such work, A Corner of the Garden, painted at his country retreat, was shown at the Royal Academy in 1937. It may have been produced as a companion-piece to the present canvas, representing a corner of the London garden and also painted on a 24 x 20 inch canvas. In these late works Clausen was particularly responsive to the rhythms of foliage achieved by dense layers of pigment, heightened, in the present instance, by the subtle mauves of rhododendron blossom. These effects were revisited in the magisterial My Back Garden, his final Chantrey Bequest purchased on behalf of the Tate Gallery in 1940.
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