Rain Clouds
In this freely painted watercolor, a green field edged by dark trees is crowned by dramatically receding cloud that sheds curtains of rain. Clausen wrote of his technique, "I try to work as simply and directly as possible in watercolour…to put the colour on in one wash, without re-touching, for I think there is nothing so beautiful as a clean tint in watercolour...And even if it does not exactly run into the right place (for watercolour is a tricky medium) the quality of the colour has something of the spontaneity and effortless rightness that one finds in Nature itself." The artist engages with a mode pioneered in the eighteen-twenties by John Constable, while his fllattened forms and unconventional perspective demonstrate an awareness of recent aesthetic shifts in French art.
Artwork Details
- Title: Rain Clouds
- Artist: Sir George Clausen (British, London 1852–1944 Newbury, Berkshire)
- Date: n.d.
- Medium: Watercolor
- Dimensions: Sheet: 10 3/8 × 13 3/4 in. (26.4 × 34.9 cm)
- Classification: Drawings
- Credit Line: Mary Oenslager Fund, 2023
- Object Number: 2023.554
- Curatorial Department: Drawings and Prints
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Sir George Clausen
before 1905
Thomas Girtin
1796–97
Joseph Mallord William Turner
1843
Gideon Saint
ca. 1760
John Ruskin
1849–50
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