Studies of a woman wearing a shawl

Sir George Clausen RA (1852 - 1944)

RA Collection: Art

These sketches of a seated woman wearing a shawl depict a model who worked for Clausen in the early 1880s when he was living in the village of Childwick Green near St. Albans. She features in several of his paintings, including Winter Work (1883- 4; Tate Britain), A Woman of the Fields (1882; later re-titled A Field Hand; private collection), Daydreams (1883; private collection) and Flora (1883; private collection).

A number of studies of the woman appear in Clausen's sketchbooks RA 06/579 and RA 06/1248 and photographs of her taken by Clausen also exist in the collection of the Museum of English Rural Life, University of Reading.

Anna Gruetzner Robins has suggested that the figure can be identified as a Mrs Susan Chapman who was living in Childwick Green during Clausen's residence there. Robins refers to census information and a sheet of drawings of an old woman by Clausen in the Royal Academy Collection which is inscribed with the name 'Mrs Chapman' (RA 05/3136) though it is not certain that the two RA drawings depict the same person.

Further reading

Anna Gruetzner Robins, 'Living the Simple Life: George Clausen at Childwick Green, St Albans', in David Peters Corbett, Ysanne Holt and Fiona Russell eds, The Geographies of Englishness: Landscape and the National Past, 1880-1940, Yale University Press, 2002, Fig. 10 [described as 'Sketch of Susan Chapman '], p. 17