Carnations

When Clausen staged his second exhibition at the Leicester Galleries in October 1912, it was as a successful former Professor of Painting at the Royal Academy. Critics who might expect a reprise of past successes were surprised to find him ‘experimenting as diversely as ever’ (Times, 12 October 1912, p. 8). Following his appointment back in 1904 and his return to residence in London the following year, Clausen produced more still-lifes, portraits and urban scenes. He had sketched flowers in pastel since the early 1890s and with a painting of his daughters, Children and Roses, (Two Girls arranging Roses) (c. 1899, private collection), he began to think more deeply about flower studies. Then, in 1905, he was approached by Bernard Hall of the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne and tasked with making purchases, suitable for the gallery, in the London art market. At this point he found himself looking carefully at the work of Henri Fantin-Latour whose Dahlias was one of the thirteen pictures he acquired on the gallery’s behalf (K. McConkey, George Clausen and the Picture of English Rural Life, 2012, p. 146).

Carnations were however, Clausen’s particular favourite and earlier depictions of these, shown in 1909, reveal Fantin’s influence. However, constant experimentation saw him rapidly moving away from the French painter’s dark tonalities to the lighter palette and livelier handling found in the present example. Throughout however, it was his honesty and unpretentiousness that impressed – as the Times noted, it was the ‘frankness of Mr Clausen that makes us trust him’.
KMc.