Sir George Clausen
The Orchard Path, Circa 1900
Oil on Canvas
61.5 x 51.5 cm
Clausen would write that 'It is not so very difficult to copy a tree, but to paint it and make it live ... is a thing few can do well...
Clausen would write that 'It is not so very difficult to copy a tree, but to paint it and make it live ... is a thing few can do well ...' (Royal Academy Lectures on Painting, 1913, Methuen and Co., p. 101). The contre jour effect of back-lighting from low afternoon sunlight in this instance, intensifies both contrast and local colour, and sets a challenge that he was to take up in subsequent years in works such as Dusk, 1903 (Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne) and The Gleaners Returning, 1908 (Tate, London). Critics quickly got the message. In the first of these, the trees had a 'rare and delicate beauty' while in the latter, 'one of the finest of those problems of light', the evening sunlight casts long shadows across the path, almost hiding the figure (McConkey 2012, pp. 132, 147-8).
Provenance
Private Collection UK
Private Collection UK
Newman Gallery