The Gleaners Returning, by Sir George Clausen

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The Gleaners Returning

Sir George Clausen

1908

Oil on canvas

Support: 838 x 660 mm; frame: 1045 x 8066 x 103 mm

Tate Britain (ref. NO2259)

Presented by the Trustees of the Chantrey Bequest 1908

The radiant golds and yellowy-greens of autumn leaves and grass are punctuated by tree-trunks, and touched with a soft haze in the sky and distant background. They contrast vividly with the sombre tones of a painting like Winter Work. [Commentary continues below.]

Image kindly released by the Tate under Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND (3.0 Unported) licence. Commentary by Jacqueline Banerjee. [Click on the image to enlarge it, and mouse over the text for links.]

Sunlight makes the leaves shimmer, and dapples the well-trodden path. Illuminated in the warm glow, two women and a girl return laden from their gleaning, each carrying what they can, in their different ways. The girl's red hat-band gives a cheerful touch. Here Clausen acknowledges nature's bounty as well as the privations of a field-worker's life, and encourages us to delight in it too. This is one of the paintings which shows Clausen's move towards Impressionism, and what Kenneth McConkey calls (in talking about a more boldly colourful painting) a "luminist" palette (38).

Related Material

Clausen on "Realism and Impressionism"

Bibliography

McConkey, K. "George Clausen: The Rustic Image" (online exhibition catalogue). The Fine Art Society. Web. 30 August 2019.

"Sir George Clausen The Gleaners Returning, 1908." Tate. Web. 1 September 2019.

Created 1 September 2019