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Lot Essay
After his removal to the countryside in 1881, Clausen produced what could be regarded as 'portrait' studies of farm workers. He must have been aware of the long-running series, 'Heads of the People', published by The Graphic, a popular weekly. These wood engravings of sailors, rustics, working people and the urban poor exemplified the Victorian fascination for social recording. However, translated into paintings such as Clausen's A Woman of the Fields, 1884 (Private Collection), the concept found less favour. Critics, the artist discovered, were looking for the more conventional forms of female beauty. He was nevertheless wary of pandering to popular taste, even though he came under pressure to do so from his dealer, David Croal Thomson. Men and women, old and young, boys as well as girls, were all considered worthy of representation. Age, as he knew from studying Rembrandt and Velazquez portraits in the National Gallery, could have its own beauty. Thus, on 25 November 1886 he noted in his account book that he had ordered a frame from Chapman's for a picture described as 'Old Woman (Mrs Sandell's) head'. No further references are made to this work and there is no note of its eventual sale.
However the painting comes bearing an interesting inscription on the reverse, indicating that it was a prize-winning entry in a competition staged by the Art Union of London. Formed in 1837, this was essentially a print publishing venture. It held annual competitions for pictures that might be engraved and sold commercially. Subscribers paid one guinea and in adition to being entitled to one engraving, they also had the chance of winning prizes which ranged from 10 to 200. It is likely that the picture size and subject matter were set as part of the rules of the competition.
Clausen remained intrigued by the idea of painting studies of character. In the following year, on a visit to his brother-in-law in Lincolnshire, he produced a half-length portrait of an elderly rustic in her garden, entitled A Toiler Still (Private Collection), and the sequence continued with The Miller's Man, 1888 (Leeds City Art Galleries) and The Ploughboy, 1888 (Gracefield Art Centre, Dumfries). Mrs Sandell's portrait therefore, is not without precedent or progeny.
However the painting comes bearing an interesting inscription on the reverse, indicating that it was a prize-winning entry in a competition staged by the Art Union of London. Formed in 1837, this was essentially a print publishing venture. It held annual competitions for pictures that might be engraved and sold commercially. Subscribers paid one guinea and in adition to being entitled to one engraving, they also had the chance of winning prizes which ranged from 10 to 200. It is likely that the picture size and subject matter were set as part of the rules of the competition.
Clausen remained intrigued by the idea of painting studies of character. In the following year, on a visit to his brother-in-law in Lincolnshire, he produced a half-length portrait of an elderly rustic in her garden, entitled A Toiler Still (Private Collection), and the sequence continued with The Miller's Man, 1888 (Leeds City Art Galleries) and The Ploughboy, 1888 (Gracefield Art Centre, Dumfries). Mrs Sandell's portrait therefore, is not without precedent or progeny.