The Old Barn, Crayon on wove paper, 321 x 226 mm. © Royal Academy of Arts, London"
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Sir George Clausen, RA, RWS (British, 1852-1944)


The Old Barn signed and dated 'G CLAUSEN.1896' (lower right); signed and dated 'G. CLAUSEN.1897' (lower left) oil on canvas107.5 x 86.4cm (42 5/16 x 34in).
|ProvenanceProperty of a Charitable Trust.ExhibitedLondon, Royal Academy, 1897, no. 52.LiteratureRoyal Academy Illustrated, 1897, p. 27.The Academy Notes, 1897, Chatto and Windus, p. 6 (illustrated).ACR Carter, 'The Royal Academy 1897', The Art Journal, 1897, p. 174.'Chronicle of Art – May', The Magazine of Art, 1897, p. 47.Art at the Royal Academy, London, 1897 (Studio Special Number), p. 45 (illustrated).'The Royal Academy – Second Notice', Dundee Courier, 6 May 1897, p. 4.MH Spielmann, 'The Royal Academy II', The Graphic, 8 May 1897, p. 570.Kenneth McConkey, Sir George Clausen, RA, RWS, 1980, exhibition catalogue, Bradford, Bristol and Newcastle Art Galleries and Royal Academy of Arts, p. 70 (illustrated as untraced).Kenneth McConkey, George Clausen and the Picture of English Rural Life, Edinburgh, 2012, fig. 205, p. 125 (illustrated as unlocated p. 126).... you remember that old barn I took you into through a very dirty farmyard. I have painted that – you said I should do it with the tempera colours, but I wanted to begin it at once, it has the effect of a church, and some mysterious rite going on. The sunlight is all outside and the barn is lighted by reflection from the small sunlit yellow straw on the ground. I have not yet finished it. I find it one of those things which must be done to a large extent from recollection. I can get the facts working direct from nature, but the "envelope" – the sentiment – the feeling of surprise that a beautiful thing always gives you: that always has to come from within.1 So Clausen wrote in June 1896 to Eugen Napoleon Nicholas, Crown Prince of Sweden. The prince, a talented painter, had sought out the English artist as one of those he most admired, and two months earlier, had stayed with him at Widdington in Essex. They explored the neighbouring farms together and Clausen showed him his current paintings of the labourers who worked in them. This on its own would be important, were it not for the fact that the present canvas initiates a significant sub-set of barn interiors that became one of the artist's most consistently revisited themes.2 The re-discovery of The Old Barn is therefore highly significant. Around Widdington, ancient barns were features of each of the long-established farms. Their roof structures echoed those of medieval churches. Cool and dark, and lit only by sunlight shining through thin thatch or doorways, these grain stores were sepulchral. Larger barns, as here, were subdivided internally so that sections could be used for over-wintering livestock. In these dilapidated caverns, corn was flailed, winnowed, sifted, bagged and stored before being transported to local mills.3 Up to this point however, Clausen's threshers and winnowers were single figure studies for which the barn interior was a mere backdrop.Now, with the prince's encouragement, he was intent on making the setting, as much as the activities it contained, his subject. After winnowing, labourers used broad wooden malt-shovels to fill the hand-cranked sifting machines, one of which is seen to the left of the principal figure in the present work. From these the sacks were filled – a dusty task. Indeed, hanging in the air, this precipitation sparkled when it caught the sunlight streaming in from an open door, a magical effect Clausen sought to capture. The setting however, recalled one of his favourite paintings - Rembrandt's Adoration of the Shepherds in the National Gallery, London.4 The Dutch master, he later declared, took 'his suggestion from some very ordinary scene', and carried 'it on in his mind' making it 'significant'.5 In an age of materialism, the barn interior contained such ordinariness, yet it embodied age-old Christian beliefs in the symbolic sustenance of 'our daily bread' – hence the ambiance of an old Essex barn could easily be compared with that of a church and the winnowers described as being involved in a 'mysterious rite'. Clausen was not particularly religious, but he caught the national mood. At the time social commentators were slowly realizing that, as the century drew to a close, Britain produced only a quarter of the grain its population required, and the country had become dependent on imports from the American prairies. The consequences of rapid industrialisation had led to physical and moral decay in the population – facts that seemed to be borne out by the lack of stamina in British troops sent to the Boer War.6 Although his picture precedes the war, drawings indicate that the principal figure in The Old Barn, appears to be wearing a military cap, indicating a former soldier (fig 1).Critics generally approved the new theme in Clausen's work although they were slow to react to its wider significance. When The Old Barn appeared in the Royal Academy in 1897 alongside Autumn Morning: Ploughing (sold Bonhams, 26 September 2018) and The Mother (unlocated), the picture was simply noted as a fine rendering of a difficult subject. It was followed by The Dark Barn (1900, private collection), The Golden Barn (1901, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, fig 2), In the Barn (1902, Leeds City Art Galleries) and Interior of an old Barn, 1908, Clausen's diploma picture in the Royal Academy's permanent collection.7 Others followed; their formats and palette similar to that in the present work. Only as the series emerged, would DS MacColl, compliment the painter on his recording of a scene that 'throbs with close observation in all its dusty tones'.8 Clausen enjoyed the obvious fact that figures could walk through a pool of sunlight and thus be strongly lit or seen in contre jour – as is obvious in The Old Barn. This was not a subject found in the plein air handbook; there were no Impressionist precedents. The spatial 'envelope' was mapped less by conventional linear perspective than by tracing the light sources. Figures, understood in the round, were appropriately spot-lit. Although not explicitly stated, Clausen accepted the moral imperatives of the 'back to the land' movement of the 1890s, and the barn became its shrine. By 1901 when The Golden Barn was exhibited, critics had caught up, Frank Rinder noting that 'the timber roof is haunted with luminous shadow; the light that gains ingress ... is sensitively controlled; this raftered structure ... is full of atmosphere, of the poetry that issues when form and colour are harmoniously blended'.9 Back in the summer of 1896 this was the challenge. Nature's facts were encased in an 'envelope' that contained the 'surprise' of 'beauty', but its realization on canvas must 'come from within'. The symbolic potential in the making of the 'staff of life' at that moment was enormous.We are grateful to Professor Kenneth McConkey for his assistance in cataloguing this lot. 1 Letter dated 24 June 1896, Waldemarsudde, Stockholm; quoted in McConkey 2012, pp. 124-5 (underlining Clausen's).2 Barn pictures appeared intermittently at the Royal Academy throughout the Edwardian years, the last being Watson's Barn, in 1931.3 Clausen showed this final stage – the dispatch of grain sacks – in The Barn Door, 1904 (private collection); see McConkey 2012, p. 144. 4 Rembrandt's Adoration of the Shepherds had been in the National Gallery since 1824. From 1884, barn interiors featured in Clausen's sketchbooks and throughout the following decade he painted studies of men threshing and winnowing, but The Old Barn was the first important canvas to fully engage the theatrical context of these activities.5 George Clausen RA, RWS, Royal Academy Lectures on Painting, 1913, Methuen & Co, p. 83.6 Rider Haggard tackled this sensitive topic by asking 'how it is proposed to safeguard the country from starvation in the event of a hostile combination of European nations against us?' See H Rider Haggard, The Farmer's Year, Being his Commonplace Book for 1898, 1899, Cresset Library ed., 1987, p. 333.7 See McConkey 2012, p. 150.8 DSM [DS MacColl], 'The Academy II – The Poor Man's Tea', The Saturday Review, 19 May 1900, p. 614.9 Frank Rinder, 'The Royal Academy of 1901', The Art Journal, 1901, p. 176-7.