AFTER SIR GEORGE CLAUSEN The Girl at the Gate Oil on canvas 130 x 120cm Clausen painted this picture at the village of Cookham Dean in Berkshire, where he lived. Mary Baldwin modelled for the woman at the gate. She was from the village and worked as the Clausen family’s nanny. Clausen was one of the ‘rural naturalists’, a young generation of predominantly French-trained painters who painted realistic scenes of everyday country life, in the late 19th century. Like others in this group Clausen was greatly influenced by the French painter Jules Bastien-Lepage, who painted in a similar style.