By 1895, the year of this painting, Clausen was aware of contradictions between the two French artists he most admired: Bastien-Lepage, whom he thought was ‘consummate’ in ‘rendering facts’, and Millet, intensely spiritual, rendering ‘sentiment’. It was the moody Symbolist landscapes of GF Watts which
provided a bridge. Clausen wrote (for a lecture on Watts that he gave at the RA in 1905): ‘...landscape does not mean only to peep out of doors... but it should express the infinite spaces of earth and sky.’ Watts’ influence is strong in this moody painting, dark but full of light.
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