Words of Wisdom: Sir George Clausen

Sir George Clausen

The realism of externals is a fault too common in our work to-day.  We see too many pictures - in all branches of painting - where the interest does not lie where it professes to be, or where it should naturally be looked for, but is frittered away over the surfaces of things, on rich stuffs, or flowers, or weeds, or other minor points and accessories ; while the central intention, or what should be the central intention, is but little regarded.  I do not wish to discourage attention to detail, - detail must and should be attended to, - but it should come after qualities of structure and expression, not before.  It is possible, with detail carried to the extremest point, still to be broad, still to keep to the structure, still to maintain the expression... But what we should guard against is letting ourselves be led away, by the comparative ease with which we can paint the little things, from the difficulties of painting the greater ones.

The realism of surfaces only is a false realism.  It seems to me to be a kind of evasion of the difficulty of true representation, and to ask that we should assume that the care with which the trivial things are rendered, implies the greater ones are equally well rendered also.  For though we may have all the buttons right, the ring on the finger, the curl in the hair, and so on, we do not produce truth of resemblance by the sum of little things without first securing the great ones.  It is a common error that much detail necessarily means completeness, or conscientiousness.

The realism of expression or character, on the other hand, may reach the level of very fine art - perhaps the finest.  It depends on the degree in which expression or character is realised.  It does not depend on the accuracy with which facts or details are copied, nor does it depend on colour, but upon a grasp of the broad structural features and movements which give expression.  It is an analysis and abstraction of the simple forms.

-George Clausen, as delivered to the students of the Royal Academy of Arts in London, January 1904.

Sir John Millais' Ophelia is an example Clausen gives of a painting with full attention to detail,
without the loss of structure, expression, and central interest.

Clausen, George, Six Lectures on Painting, (E.P. Dutton & Co., 1906), pp. 120-122.

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