After the Clausens moved to Berkshire in May 1885, we have the impression that their house was surrounded by children. Their son and daughter were infants, and Agnes Mary Clausen, who would shortly become pregnant with her third child, was looking for local girls to child-mind or assist in the house. Having left temporary accommodation in St Albans, Grove House at Cookham Dean, afforded much more space. The girls from labourers’ families, crop-haired and rosy-cheeked, and wearing white pinafores, came calling and soon found their way into the artist’s work.

Small ‘heads of the people’ studies, like the present picture, were favoured by Clausen’s north of England patron, John Maddocks, and on 2 April 1886 the artist’s account book tells us that three such ‘girls’ heads’, two landscapes and a painting of a mower were sold to the Bradford mill owner (‘Heads of the People’ was a long, quasi-sociological series depicting the heads of working people by numerous artists that featured in The Graphic). Maddocks would become a stalwart supporter of the New English Art Club which was opened its first exhibition on 12 April 1886, with Clausen as one of its leading members (Maddocks lent Clausen’s The Shepherdess, 1885, now in the National Museums on Merseyside, to the first New English Art Club exhibition). The tiny head studies he supplied ten days earlier were priced at £5 each. It is impossible to identify these little pictures, but it seems not unlikely that the present work, a fascinating discovery, could be one of them.

Far from being a potboiler, it shows the artist working in the aggressively ‘modern’ style of Naturalism – using square-shaped brushes, sharp delineation and painting swiftly from life. In the present case, in order to preserve the grain of a primed canvas, the artist has painted on its reverse side. Pin holes at the four corners indicate that he has adopted the technique favoured by Henry Herbert La Thangue and attached the loose canvas to a board for painting – attaching it to the stretcher only when complete. A drawing by Clausen probably shows the same girl wearing a hat, and she may also be the model for Holiday Time (Christie’s New York, 30 April 2019, lot 54), Clausen’s contribution to the Grosvenor Gallery exhibition in that year.

Later in 1886, when Polly Baldwin was appointed as the children’s nursemaid, she took over as a favourite model (for further head studies painted c. 1886-7 see Kenneth McConkey, George Clausen and the picture of English rural life, 2012, Atelier Books, Edinburgh, pp. 78-9). However, what was important about all of these works is their claim to complete objectivity. At this point Clausen was the principal exponent of the ‘modern realism’ Bastien-Lepage had pioneered in Paris. ‘All his personages are placed before us, in the most satisfying completeness,’ he wrote, ‘without the appearance of artifice, but as they live …’ (George Clausen, ‘Bastien-Lepage and Modern Realism’, The Scottish Art Review, vol 1, 1888, p. 114). Sentiment, prettiness, potboilers, were for others.

The present work is inscribed Miss Helen Cutler on the reverse. Although it is possible that the inscription identifies the model, no girl bearing this name and aged between 10 and 12, appears to have lived at Cookham Dean, according to the 1891 census. The inscription also appears not to be in the artist’s hand and may indicate a previous owner.

We are grateful to Professor Kenneth McConkey for his assistance in cataloguing this lot.