‘The sharp, searing colours, hatched across one another in imitation of pastel, created an almost Mediterranean effect. This was a palette as one could hope to obtain – and it was controlled and subdued when he came to the Study of a Girl’s Head (Emmy Wright).’ K. MCCONKEY, 'GEORGE CLAUSEN AND THE PICTURE OF ENGLISH RURAL LIFE', EDINBURGH 2012, P. 108.

FIG. 1 SIR GEORGE CLAUSEN, EVENING SONG, 1893. OIL ON CANVAS, 91 X 121 CM. PRIVATE COLLECTION.

In 1891 Clausen moved with his wife and five children, from Cookham Dean in Berkshire to the village of Widdington, five miles from Saffron Walden in Essex. The move coincided with the artist’s return to exhibiting at the Royal Academy, following the closure of the Grosvenor Gallery later in 1890. The first major painting that Clausen painted at Widdington was Evening Song (Christie’s, New York, 22 October 1997, lot 139; fig. 1) a large picture of a young girl lying in grass at the edge of a hayfields listening to the skylarks. This painting marked a change in Clausen’s painting style, from the square-brush technique of his pictures from the 1880s influenced by Bastien-Lepage, to an Impressionistic use of colour and light suggested by Clausen’s study of Monet and Degas. In The Art Annual of 1893 it was remarked that Clausen ‘once embarked… on the enterprise of catching the hues of iridescence, the painter seldom stays his hand until what was always dubiously atmospheric becomes by exaggeration, no more than a patchwork of coloured paint’.1 It is the same shimmering brilliance of colour that Clausen adopted when he painted Head of a Girl which captures the same subject as Head of a Young Girl of 1884 (Bonhams, New York, 23 April 2008, lot 199), A Village Maiden of 1886 (Christie’s, London, 4 June 2009, lot 30) and A Little Child of 1888 (Leeds City Art Gallery) but painted in an almost Pointillist manner.

‘...he [Clausen] has seldom painted anything more finely than these unsophisticated young country girls with their healthy pink faces glowing through their own shade. In this sort of natural study the best energies of some of our strongest young painters are now engaged.’ C. MONKHOUSE, 'THE INSTITUTE OF PAINTERS IN OIL COLOURS', IN THE ACADEMY, 12 DECEMBER 1885, P. 399.

The peaceful rural retreat of Widdington offered Clausen endless new inspiration and was a more simplistic and innocent haven compared to Cookham which had started to become tainted in Clausen’s eyes by the metropolitan expansion that was bringing commuters to live in the once quiet backwater. The beautiful countryside, traditional farming practices adopted by the locals and the wilder woodlands and meadows re-ignited Clausen’s verve. However there were some disadvantages to be overcome, particularly finding new models for his pictures. The move from Cookham meant that Clausen could no longer paint his favourite model Rose Grimsdale, a little auburn-haired girl with a snub nose and big brown eyes, who had been the subject of a series of small oil paintings and pastels including the drawing Head of a Young Girl (Christie’s, London, 16 June 2010, lot 110). In Widdington Clausen looked for a replacement for Rosie and soon discovered a local schoolgirl named Emily ‘Emmy’ Wright who was persuaded to pose – no doubt the artist’s payment for a few afternoons of posing was helpful to supplement her parent’s meagre wages. She was the model for Evening Song, The Little Flowers of the Field also painted in 1893 (Private collection; fig. 2) and the present picture, simply titled Study, Head of a Girl. Emmy had been born in 1881 and was thirteen when she posed for the present picture, although she was said to have looked younger than her years. The eldest of five siblings, she lived at Woodend Cottage with her parents Isabel and Frederick Wright, a bricklayer and labourer who was the son of the village shoemaker. She appears to have remained in Widdington and 1901, when the census was taken, she was recorded as living at 25 The Village and working as an assistant school teacher.

FIG. 2 SIR GEORGE CLAUSEN, THE LITTLE FLOWERS OF THE FIELD, 1893. OIL ON CANVAS, 41 X 56 CM. PRIVATE COLLECTION.

Head of a Girl was owned by the painter Vernon Wethered (1865–1952), a regular exhibitor with Clausen at the New English Art Club. Clausen is known to have given or sold pictures to several friends who were artists, including Girl in a Field of 1897 (National Museum of Wales, Cardiff) which was owned by William Goscombe John and Sheepfold in Evening of 1890 (private collection) was given to Edward le Bas. The address in Hampstead, given on the reverse of the present picture, is that where Wethered resided from 1908 following his move from Sussex. There is a letter from Wethered to Clausen in the archives of the Royal Academy in which Wethered somewhat awkwardly values the painting at £150 and wishes Clausen luck on his trans-Atlantic trip – presumably Clausen had asked to borrow the picture for the Pittsburgh exhibition noted on the reverse of the canvas. It seems that Head of a Girl was not the only picture by Clausen purchased by Wethered in 1894, on 28 May Clausen recorded a payment of £200 from ‘Mr Wethered’ and as he had already noted that his only Royal Academy picture of that year, Turning the Plough (unlocated) had sold, it seems likely that this large payment was for this picture. The fact that his name is recorded as ‘Mr Wethered’ suggests a formal agreement rather than a picture traded among friends.

In 1897 Vernon married Mary Geraldine Dingwall (1865–1925) sister of Charles Arthur Dingwall, who tragically died in 1915 when the passenger liner HMS Lusitania was torpedoed by a German U-boat. Mary and Vernon had three children, Maud Llewellyn (b. 1898), Vernon (b. 1899) and Audrey (b. 1903) and lived at Bury Manor, Bury Sussex. Vernon was always short of money but would buy another painting rather than chairs to sit on, making do with orange boxes as furniture according to his daughter Maud. Maud Wethered studied at the Slade School of Fine Art from 1916 to 1921, firstly under Henry Tonks, and later with the sculptor, Harvard Thomas. Her early watercolours were strongly influenced by her father with whom she painted on frequent family holidays in Europe. However, Maud’s artistic ambitions were restless and she soon turned to sculpture, both in relief and in the round. She exhibited extensively at the Royal Academy, Society of Wood Engravers, Goupil Gallery, New English Art Club, Chenil Gallery, Redfern Gallery, Fieldborne Galleries, Whitechapel Gallery and at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool.

Maud’s sister Audrey (1903–2001) studied at the Royal Academy of Music and the Art of Movement Studio, where she was a pupil of Rudolf Laban and worked with Lisa Ullmann, Warren Lamb and Marion North. Wethered went on to use movement principles in therapy with a range of client groups including children and adults with mental health issues, including schizophrenia, and adults with learning disabilities. Her book Music and Drama in Therapy written with Chloë Gardner is still in print.

The painting has remained in the Wethered family, inherited by the great-granddaughter of Charles Arthur Dingwall. It is a symbol of the shared admiration between Clausen and Wethered and has been much loved by a family that was both artistically-gifted and appreciative of skilled craftsmanship.

1 Art Journal, 1893, p. 243.