Signed with initials l.r.: GC

Watercolour and bodycolour, 23 by 22.5 cm (9 by 9 ins)

The painting Bird Scaring (Private Collection) was one of Clausen’s most direct early rural social-realist works. In it a young farm boy, armed with slabs of wood (to be clattered together to ward off the crows) makes his way out into the fields in his tattered clothes. This small but intense watercolour is a study for the final work. Clausen was drawn to the subject again in 1896 in a version which places the young boy head-on in a more extensive  landscape (Harris Art Gallery, Preston, no.P74).