Sir George Clausen, RA, RSW, RWS, HonRBA, RI, ROI, NEAC

British 1852 – 1944

Sir George Clausen was a British artist who was a founding member of the New English Art Club in 1886. Clausen was born in London in 1852, the son of a decorative artist of Danish descent and a Scottish mother. Between 1867 and 1873, he attended design classes at the South Kensington Schools (which would later become the Royal College of Art).

His training included working in the studio of Edwin Long RA and subsequently in Paris under Bouguereau and Tony Robert-Fleury at the Académie Julian in 1883. He was an admirer of the naturalism of the painter Jules Bastien-Lepage, with whom he shared the view that light is the real subject of landscape art.

Clausen became one of the foremost modern painters of landscape and of peasant life, influenced to a certain extent by the Impressionists and plein-air painting. Most of all, he was particularly interested in effects of light, often showing figures set against the sun, but he always retained a sense of solidity of form. His pictures excel in rendering the appearance of things under flecking outdoor sunlight, or in the shady shelter of a barn or stable.

Clausen was a founding member of the New English Art Club in 1886. In 1895, he was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy, and a full Academician in 1908. As a Professor of Painting at the Royal Academy, 1903–1906, Clausen gave a series of memorable lectures, which were memorialised and published as Six Lectures on Painting (1904) and Aims and Ideals in Art (1906). He was elected as the Master of the Art Workers’ Guild in 1909, the Master of the Painting School (RA) 1926-1927. In 1921 Clausen was an original Society of Graphic Art member and showed his work in their first exhibition. Alongside his election to Senior Royal Academician in 1927, Clausen was knighted for his distinguished services to the arts. This honour recognised his lifelong contributions to British painting—particularly his celebrated rural naturalism, his influential role in the Royal Academy, and his impactful work as an official war artist during World War I.

Sir George Clausen’s artworks are featured across prominent UK institutions, particularly in London and regional galleries. His renowned British rural scenes and Impressionist-influenced landscapes are most notably housed at Tate Britain, the Ashmolean Museum, V&A and the Royal Academy of Arts.