Watercolour over pen and ink, 34 by 42 cm (13 ¼ by 16 ½ ins)

Provenance: Mr. Ralph Fastnedge, DFC (Curator of the Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight); Thence by descent

A lifetime admirer of the work of the great French realist painter Jean-François Millet, this late rural subject picture is probably influenced by the French artist’s motif of peasants pulling a pig, as seen in The Pig Killers of 1867-70 (National Gallery of Canada). Clausen re-invents this idea depicting a group of countrymen removing a dead tree stump. A more finished version of this picture (which probably dates from  c.1920), is in the Holburne Museum, Bath (see Kenneth McConkey, Sir George Clausen 1852-1944, Bradford Art Gallery exh.cat, 1980, p.101, no.141).