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Lot Essay
At the beginning of 1914 Clausen obtained a new young model named Lilian Ryan. She was aged 15, the fifth of eight children from a working class family, and she sought a career as a professional model. Clausen engaged her to pose for a head-and-shoulders study which he sent to the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh, and ended up taking her under his wing with advice on those artists suitable for a model of her tender age. No further mention is made of her until 1916 when he painted a second version of the RSA oil, this time for the Royal Academy in London (K. McConkey, George Clausen and the Picture of English Rural Life, Glasgow, 2012, p. 170). At this point, the present profile portrait of Lily was also painted.
With Clausen's approval, Lilian went on to sit to Gerald Kelly, a respectable portrait painter then in his late thirties. Although Kelly was soon off to Spain on a painting trip, contact was maintained and the two were married in 1920 (see D. Hudson, For Love of Painting, The Life of Sir Gerald Kelly, KCVO, PRA, 1975, p. 40). Thereafter Lily/Lilian appeared regularly in the Royal Academy - her name changed to 'Jane', in Kelly's portraits. Indeed so frequent was her appearance that when presented to Queen Mary, the queen exclaimed, 'Jane of the many Janes!' (Ibid., p. 41).
The significance of the present picture, however, lies in the profile it presents. Clausen was not given to flattery, but this striking viewpoint played to one of the sitter's strengths - and one that greatly appealed to Kelly (fig. 1, Sir Gerald Kelly, Jane XXX, 1930, Royal Academy of Arts, London).
However, where his Diploma work was admired for the suave treatment of expensive velvet and fur, Clausen typically dispenses with such adornments. For him the study involved interpretive analysis of form seen in the subtle transitions of local colour, built up in dry pigment so as to be almost sculptural in character. In his lectures to students at the Academy, Clausen had stressed the 'fine quality of paint' which was 'put down simply and sweetly', and throughout his entire career this was expressed as most frequently in head studies, which from around 1916 became almost reductive. It was the concentration of purpose seen in Lily which anticipates The Dutch Girl, of the following year (see lot 53).
KMc.
With Clausen's approval, Lilian went on to sit to Gerald Kelly, a respectable portrait painter then in his late thirties. Although Kelly was soon off to Spain on a painting trip, contact was maintained and the two were married in 1920 (see D. Hudson, For Love of Painting, The Life of Sir Gerald Kelly, KCVO, PRA, 1975, p. 40). Thereafter Lily/Lilian appeared regularly in the Royal Academy - her name changed to 'Jane', in Kelly's portraits. Indeed so frequent was her appearance that when presented to Queen Mary, the queen exclaimed, 'Jane of the many Janes!' (Ibid., p. 41).
The significance of the present picture, however, lies in the profile it presents. Clausen was not given to flattery, but this striking viewpoint played to one of the sitter's strengths - and one that greatly appealed to Kelly (fig. 1, Sir Gerald Kelly, Jane XXX, 1930, Royal Academy of Arts, London).
However, where his Diploma work was admired for the suave treatment of expensive velvet and fur, Clausen typically dispenses with such adornments. For him the study involved interpretive analysis of form seen in the subtle transitions of local colour, built up in dry pigment so as to be almost sculptural in character. In his lectures to students at the Academy, Clausen had stressed the 'fine quality of paint' which was 'put down simply and sweetly', and throughout his entire career this was expressed as most frequently in head studies, which from around 1916 became almost reductive. It was the concentration of purpose seen in Lily which anticipates The Dutch Girl, of the following year (see lot 53).
KMc.