This portrait of a young girl has an intensely real quality. She is shown standing in a field, holding an earthenware pot, flanked by the spherical forms of flowering onion plants. The picture is influenced by the conventions of photography in its uncompromising directness. The girl is posing in a slightly awkward way, as if she were having a snapshot taken, showing none of the relaxed and confident attitudes of a professional model. Clausen represents the serious and somewhat doubtful expression on her face with great tenderness. He makes the viewer sense the mixed emotions that must have been in the mind of the child, confronted by the strange and foreign figure of the artist. Although the subtle colouring used by Clausen to some extent glamorises her peasant costume, we are still made aware of her life of poverty and hard work, indicated by the simplicity and homespun nature of her clothes.

George Clausen was a British painter who originally trained as a decorator. He studied painting at the South Kensington School of Art in London and the Antwerp Academy. The subject matter of this image is typical of the rustic scenes that Clausen favoured, partly as a result of the influence of French naturalism. This tendency, which first emerged in Clausen’s work in the late 1870s, was confirmed by his visit to the artists’ colony of Quimperlé in Brittany in 1882, when this picture was painted.