Coloured chalks, 39 by 28cm

The monumental subject painting Gleaners Coming Home of 1904 (Tate Gallery, on loan to Compton Verney House Trust) is one of the artist’s great valedictory rural works, painted just before his move from Essex to London in the following year. As so often with Clausen it is a return to a subject he had tackled in previous years, in this case with Gleaners in 1882 (Private Collection). In the intervening years, the naturalism of Bastien-Lepage so evident in the early 1880s had given way to a dynamic impressionism as demonstrated in the 1904 Tate painting. This fine pastel drawing is a study for the figure to the right hand side of this painting. Other studies are in the Victoria and Albert Museum.