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signed and dated l.r.: G. CLAUSEN 1885; signed, dated and inscribed with the title on the reverse

oil on canvas

PROVENANCE

George McCulloch, possibly bought through Clausen's agent Deschamps who is recorded as having shown the picture to a potential client in September 1885, thence to his wife;
Christie's, 23-30 May 1913, 'The McCulloch Collection', lot. 238, bought by H. Roberts Esq., and thence by descent to the present owners
EXHIBITED

Probably, Royal Institute of Oil Painters, 1885, no. 478;
Royal Academy, The McCulloch Collection, winter 1909, no. 38
LITERATURE AND REFERENCES

R.A.M. Stevenson, 'George Clausen' in Art Journal, 1890, repr. p. 291;
'Modern Art, The McCulloch Collection', special number of Art Journal, 1909, p. 117
CATALOGUE NOTE

Little Haymakers has not been seen in public since 1913 when the famous collection of Sir George McCulloch was dispersed. Painted in the summer of 1885, the painting is relatively early in Clausen's oeuvre, from the period in which his art was greatly inspired by the work of the French painters of rustic subjects, particularly Jules Bastien-Lepage. Sir James Linton wrote of the similarity between Clausen and Bastien-Lepage's work in 1887: 'The outward imitation is often so close that the style of costume is adhered to as much as possible without making it altogether incorrect... The light and shade, the key of colour, the general character impress the spectator as belonging to Normandy not to England - that is the Normandy essentially of Millet, of Breton, of Bastien-Lepage...' (Magazine of Art, vol. 10, 1887, p. 158)

The influence of Jules Bastien-Lepage manifested itself most apparently in a group of pictures by Clausen from the 1880s, which includes The Return from the Fields (private collection), Breton Girl Carrying a Jar of 1882 (Victoria and Albert Museum), reaching its zenith in The Stone Pickers of 1887 (Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne). Clausen had been introduced to Bastien-Lepage's work in 1880 when the two artists exhibited in the same annual show at the Grosvenor Gallery. Among the French artist's nine exhibits that year was his depiction of exhausted field workers, Les Foins (Musée d'Orsay, Paris) which had proved controversial at the Paris Salon two years earlier. Clausen was greatly affected by Les Foins and sought to emulate its creator by moving from London to the country to find subjects worthy of depiction. He found the move to Childwick Green liberating and wrote that, 'one saw people doing simple things under good conditions of lighting: and there was always landscape. And nothing made easy for you: you had to dig out what you wanted.' (George Clausen,'Autobiographical Notes' in Artwork, no. 25, spring 1931, p. 19). The first manifestations of Clausen's new approach to art were the numerous sketches made of field workers, and in 1882 he exhibited The Gleaners, his first painting of agricultural workers painted in the square brush technique. The pictures Clausen painted in the early 1880s explored his fascination with rugged rural subjects and matched the energy of his continental counterpart's pictures.

Little Harvesters was painted at Cookham Dene in Berkshire, where Clausen and his wife Agnes stayed in the summer of 1885 at Grove House in the village. It was here that he painted The Shepherdess (Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool). The striking model that appears in several of the paintings from 1884 onwards, including The Shepherdess and probably also Little Harvesters was Mary Baldwin (Polly), the Clausen family's nursemaid in Cookham Dene. She is thought to have been around twelve or thirteen years old in 1885, although her birth date is not known.

Little Haymakers was bought by George McCulloch (1848-1907) one of the wealthiest collectors of the Victorian era. McCulloch made his fortune in Australia as the owner of a silver mine which he is said to have won in a poker game. He was born in Glasgow and travelled extensively studying farming methods in South America and Mexico before he emigrated to Australia in 1870 and began to run the Broken Hill mine. McCulloch's interest in farming is reflected in many of the pictures he bought to decorate the home he retired to in London in 1893. He spent an estimated £200,000 on three hundred paintings by contemporary artists to hang on the walls at 184 Queen's Gate. French art had been McCulloch's first love and his collection included three important paintings by Lepage, Pas Mèche and Pauvre Fauvette of 1881, and The Potato Harvest, Saison d'Octobre, all of which depict young peasants. Among the other more notable French paintings in his collection were works by Léon Hermitte and ten paintings by Dagnan-Bouveret. His collection was also rich in other plein-air paintings by the later generation of nineteenth century British artists, including works by Bramley, Stanhope Forbes, Garstin, Stott, La Thangue and Lavery.

McCulloch's Lepage, Pauvre Fauvette (Glasgow City Art Gallery) clearly inspired Clausen's Ploughing of 1889 (Aberdeen Art Gallery and Museums) and Pas Méche (Edinburgh, National Gallery of Scotland) which also hung at 184 Queen's Gate, although it was not purchased by McCulloch until 1913. It is likely that Clausen had seen Pauvre Fauvette when it was exhibited at the United Gallery in London in 1882. In 1888 Clausen wrote an article for the Scottish Art Review entitled 'Bastien-Lepage and Modern Realism'; 'One reads in his works the life-history of the workaday human being he painted... all his personages are placed before us in the most satisfying completeness, without the appearance of artifice, but as they live; and without comment as far as is possible, on the author's part.'

The colour scheme of fresh greens, charcoal greys and white in Little Harvesters is similar to that of The Stone Pickers painted two years later and the gentle light of the fading afternoon is similar. The positioning of the young figures in the 1885 composition, close to the spectator gives the painting an immediacy and drama whilst the figures of workers in the background creates a sweeping idea of space and recession. These are weary labourers in the fields but not the exhausted and down-trodden workers painted by Bastien-Lepage who slump in the soil or are bowed over ploughs. Clausen's art was softer and less critical of farming traditions and Little Harvesters presents an almost heroic notion of labour in the form of the two little girls with soil under their finger-nails and ruddy outdoor complexions.