Summer Exhibition - Stanley Spencer and the River Thames
29 April - 1 November 2009
INTRODUCTION
To mark
the 50th anniversary of Spencer’s death, the gallery has chosen to
focus on his depictions of the Thames, which played such a central role
in his art and life. Our latest acquisition, ‘Study for “Christ
Preaching at Cookham Regatta”: Listening from Punts’ is on display
for the first time, joining the sequence of drawings for his final unfinished
masterpiece, ‘Christ Preaching at Cookham Regatta’. Around half
the works in the exhibition are river based.
In his ‘Thames: Sacred River’, Peter Ackroyd summarised it thus: ‘The list of twentieth century artists who have painted the Thames is endless – from Monet and Kokoschka to Pasmore…Of all twentieth-century artists, however, Stanley Spencer is the one most associated with the river.’1 The river Thames – particularly the stretch either side of Cookham Bridge – formed an indispensable part of Spencer’s oeuvre, whether his themes were religious or secular, or sometimes a combination of the two. Their range is well represented in this exhibition: from a celebrated early work such as ‘Swan Upping’, to the beautifully precise landscapes of the 1930s (seen here in ‘Turk’s Boatyard, Cookham’ and ‘View from Cookham Bridge’), and the great, late outpouring of imaginative pictures culminating in the series devoted to ‘Christ Preaching at Cookham Regatta’, which includes ‘Dinner on the Hotel Lawn’. There were periods, notably the two World Wars, when he was not in Cookham to paint the river and indeed one key Thames picture, ‘Swan Upping’, was interrupted by war for several years.
There are many categories of river painting and pastimes (he was not, after all, a painter of watercraft nor, like Kenneth Grahame’s Rat, did he spend time ‘simply messing about in boats’), but Spencer, as ever, invented his own iconography.2 His feelings for the river were deep-rooted and intense. In a letter to Desmond Chute, written in 1917 while abroad on active service, he recaptures his feelings on a walk after dusk, ‘… along the footpath to the river-side …and then I stand still and the river moves on in a solid mass, not a ripple…’ In the morning, at first light, he goes with a friend and his Airedale terrier (see ‘The Bridge’) to Odney Weir ‘for a bathe and swim… I feel fresh awake and alive; that is the time for visitations. We swim and look at the bank over the rushes I swim right in the pathway of sunlight I go home to breakfast thinking as I go of the beautiful wholeness of the day. During the morning I am visited and walk about being in that visitation…’3 Inspiration for his river pictures could be complex. ‘Christ Preaching at Cookham Regatta’ was originally to be Christ on the lake of Gennesaret, but seeing Mr Turk ‘leaning on a great armful of oars’ helped transform it into a picture of Christ in the horse-ferry barge at Cookham regatta. This fusion of the biblical and earthly aspects of his devotion to the Thames is emphasised by the river’s location as an aisle in his projected ‘Church House’ (see nos 1 & 8).
The exhibition would never have been possible without the generous loans from Tate: ‘Swan Upping at Cookham’, ‘The Bridge’, ‘Turk’s Boatyard, Cookham’ and ‘Dinner on the Hotel Lawn’, for which we express our sincere thanks. We should also like to express our gratitude to all those who demonstrate their continuing support for the gallery, whether by gift or long-term loan.
1. Peter Ackroyd, ‘Thames: Sacred River’, Chatto & Windus, 2007
2. Spencer was fond of ‘The Wind in the Willows’, set on the Thames and written by Kenneth Grahame while he lived in Cookham Dean.
3. Spencer’s letters to Desmond Chute are in the Stanley Spencer Gallery collection.
All the works in the exhibition (other than no. 31, Unity Spencer’s fine portrait of her father) are by Sir Stanley Spencer RA.
1 Sarah Tubb and the Heavenly Visitors, 1933
Oil on canvas
In 1910 the tail of Halley’s Comet created an exceptional sunset which so frightened ‘Granny’ Tubb that she feared the end of the world had come and knelt by her gate in Cookham High Street to pray. Not recalling her features, Spencer replaced them with those of her daughter Sarah. She is comforted by heavenly visitors who present her with ‘all those things which she loved’. These include a postcard of Cookham church held by Spencer’s cousin Annie Slack, whose shop, seen in the picture, was in the cottages now replaced by the Peking Inn. On the left a grocer, depicted with a gleam of humour and loosely based on Spencer’s cousin Willie Hatch, shares in ‘the peaceful atmosphere’. As Spencer explained to his dealer Dudley Tooth, he disliked ‘the idea of alarm’ and instead the picture became ‘a sort of apotheosis of the old lady’.
The picture was designed for Spencer’s projected ‘Church House’, planned as a sequel to the Sandham Memorial Chapel, Burghclere (now National Trust), which commemorates his military service in the First World War. The ‘Church House’ was to express his feelings on love and to celebrate Cookham as a village in heaven. It was never built, but he produced ever-expanding schemes of pictures for it from 1932 until his death in 1959. ‘Sarah Tubb’ was probably intended for a Pentecost series in which angels and saints visit Cookham performing various acts of benevolence; this was subsumed into the overall theme of the ‘Last Day’ (a variation on the ‘Last Judgement’, the general resurrection of the dead at the second coming of Christ). Thus the old woman is seen in her newly resurrected state in a Cookham transformed into heaven.
Barbara Karmel Bequest, 1995
2 The Scarecrow, Cookham, 1934
Oil on canvas
In 1935 the Royal Academy’s hanging committee rejected two of Spencer’s more controversial pictures for the Summer Exhibition, but hung three works, including this painting. His consequent resignation as an ARA sparked a controversy in the press, not least in reviewing the Royal Academy’s attitude to contemporary art. The artist did not rejoin the Royal Academy until 1950 when he was elected RA. The scarecrow stood in a plot next to ‘Rowborough’, with a view down to the village. Spencer recalled, ‘Left and deserted as it was it seemed daily to become more a part of its surroundings…In the evening he faded into the gloaming like a Cheshire cat.’
Lent by a private collector
3 Swan Upping at Cookham, 1915-19
Oil on canvas
One Sunday morning ‘I could hear the people going on the river as I sat in our north aisle pew’, Spencer recalled, so he decided to take ‘the in-church feeling out of church’. Then seeing swans in carpenters’ bags and the Bailey girls carrying cushions to punts, he chose to depict swan upping: the annual round-up of swans on the Thames to distinguish their ownership by the Crown or the Companies of Vintners and Dyers (in those days, one nick on the beak for the Dyers, two for the Vintners and none for the Crown). Ownership was originally prized because swans featured in feasts. He drew the composition from imagination before going to the river to see whether he had successfully captured the atmosphere, writing later, ‘my religious consciousness began my feeling for places.’ The picture was painted in Ship Cottage and then his bedroom at home. In Turk’s boatyard swans and cushions are shifted, and men with unseen faces work on a punt; two figures stand on Cookham Bridge. The horse ferry barge, later to reappear in ‘Christ Preaching at Cookham Regatta’ (no. 8), is moored near the flagpole in the Ferry Hotel lawn, not far from the ferryman’s cottage seen in the picture. Spencer had painted only the upper section when he enlisted in the RAMC in 1915; he had to wait for demobilisation before he could continue, painting the water more broadly in the lower half of the picture.
Lent by Tate: Presented by the Friends of the Tate Gallery, 1962
4 The Bridge, 1920
Oil on canvas
This was Spencer’s next Thames picture after ‘Swan Upping’ (no. 3) and the last work he executed while living with his parents at Fernlea, before moving across the river to the Slessers at Bourne End. Cookham Bridge is pivotal to his river scenes. The iron bridge of 1867, with its parapet of pierced quatrefoils, is here transmuted into a stone structure, though still with its toll house and view to Hedsor Woods. Spencer wrote, ‘Quite a good idea of people leaning over either side of bridge and crossing to look from one side to the other’, though he was less happy overall with its realisation and had to be dissuaded from destroying the work. The suggestion that the figures may be watching a boat race, as in the annual regatta, does not appear to be borne out by the empty river and lack of a festive atmosphere. The engaging Airedale terrier, called ‘Tinker’, belonged to Guy Lacey, a friend still remembered for diving off the bridge and teaching Spencer to swim; in 1917, the artist had written lyrically of bathing at Odney soon after dawn, adding, ‘my friend has an Airedale terrier, a fine dog with magnificent head and shoulders. He jumps leaps & bounds about in the dewy grass.’
Lent by Tate: Presented by The Art Fund, 1942
5 Sunbathers at Odney, 1935
Oil on canvas
Part of the ‘Baptism series’, set at Odney in Cookham, which depicts events surrounding the Baptism of Christ. Spencer had been one of the village boys who swam at Odney Weir with the ‘city gents’ who took a dip before catching a morning train. As his brother Gilbert recalled: ‘No one ever thought of bathing anywhere but at Odney…We bathed summer and winter: Father thought we were mad.’
Presented by Mr G G Shiel, 1962
6 Girls Returning from a Bathe, 1936
Oil on canvas
Like ‘Sunbathers at Odney’ (no. 5), this belongs to the ‘Baptism’ series. Encircled by tyre inner tubes that echo the circular window of the Odney Club, two girls return ‘from a baptism’ at Odney Pool. Like the figures in the ‘Domestic Scenes’ series, the girls will proceed to the wedding feast of the related ‘Marriage at Cana’ theme. At this stage in his career, the fertility of Spencer’s imagination led to a proliferation of overlapping themes. As so often in his oeuvre, an apparently everyday scene carries a religious dimension.
Lent by a private collector
7 Dinner on the Hotel Lawn, 1956-7
Oil on canvas
The Ferry Hotel lawn with its potted geraniums had already featured in Spencer’s inter-war landscapes when it reappeared in this Regatta series painting, as well as the central canvas of ‘Christ Preaching at Cookham Regatta’ (no. 8). The six supporting pictures for the central canvas, of which this is the fifth, show people either in punts or on the hotel lawn. The grass was later replaced by hard-surfacing. Only a few of them pay proper attention to Christ’s message, as he preaches from the horse ferry barge moored out of sight, just to the left of the lawn. In this picture, hotel staff in black and white uniforms lay the long, punt-shaped tables with some vigour (apparently a memory of ‘the somewhat unceremonious way our maid Elsie passed things across the table’), though Spencer commented, ‘… I seem to have forgotten about the food…And I was annoyed to notice that I had made the servants putting the knives on the wrong side: they are doing it so nicely.’ It has been suggested, albeit tentatively, that figures at the foreground table may be stylised versions of the artist and three women important in his life: his second wife Patricia Preece leaning against another woman Charlotte Murray (whom he met in Port Glasgow), at the end of the table, and the ebullient Daphne Charlton with her back to us (see nos 36-37). As in ‘Christ Preaching at Cookham Regatta’, Spencer looked down from Cookham Bridge, adopting a viewpoint from which he had seen the regatta in his childhood.
Lent by Tate: Presented by the Trustees of the Chantrey Bequest, 1957
8 Christ Preaching at Cookham Regatta, 1952-9
Oil and pencil on canvas
Spencer did not live to complete this last major work, which he planned as the central picture in the river aisle of his ‘Church House’. In a natural link between Cookham and religion, Christ preaches at the regatta the artist recalled from his boyhood. Sitting in the centre in a basket chair in the old horse ferry barge, by the Ferry Hotel near Cookham Bridge, Christ preaches to the assembled villagers. Mr Turk, in centre foreground, brandishes an impressive array of boating equipment. Dressed in holiday outfits the crowd sport the Chinese lanterns which illuminated the boats in the evening. Class distinctions between the people in boats and those who had to make do on the bank are nicely maintained. The luxury of a punt, unknown in the Spencer family, seemed to the artist ‘an unattainable Eden’. Spencer wrote in a letter of the contrast between Christ and ‘the stalwart, prosperous, white-trousered proprietor of the Hotel’ surveying the profitable scene from his lawn. Sixty chalk drawings made in 1952 form the basis of the present picture, which displays Spencer’s skill in composing complex figure subjects. The studies were transferred to canvas to create an outline drawing of great beauty. As the partially completed picture shows, Spencer painted one area before starting the next. He worked with his usual small brushes, his nose almost touching the paint. Seven related drawings are on show (nos 20-25, 33), some of which include motifs not adopted in the final picture.
Lent by a private collector
9 View from Cookham Bridge, 1936
Oil on canvas
Painted many years before ‘Christ Preaching at Cookham Regatta’ (no.8), but from a similarly elevated viewpoint, Spencer showed the view from the other side of the bridge, this time as far as the horizon, including Turk’s boatyard and Holy Trinity church, which had already featured in major works. As in all Spencer’s best landscapes, this quintessential summer view of the riverside at Cookham is provided with an abundance of naturalistic detail. It is also strongly suggestive of people and their activities, although no figures actually appear.
Accepted by HM Government in Lieu of Inheritance Tax and allocated to the Stanley Spencer Gallery, Cookham, 2003
10 Turk’s Boatyard, Cookham, 1931
Oil on canvas
In 1931, during one of his summer breaks at Cookham from work in the Burghclere chapel, Spencer wrote to his patron Mary Behrend, ‘I have now done a really rather good picture of the boats on land at Turk’s Boathouse & the river cutting across in the top part of picture…’. Despite the economic recession, it sold well, fetching the increased sale price of £63 that year. Frederick Turk, the Queen’s Swan Master (see ‘Swan Upping’, no. 3), whose family had been on the river for about 200 years, hired out boats such as these punts and traditional wooden skiffs. The boatyard is shown with a view of toll house, bridge and boathouse; the boathouse burnt down some years ago. Turk’s boatyard appears in four pictures by Spencer; three of them, plus a drawing, are in this exhibition (nos 3, 9, 10 & 29). Lent by Tate: Bequeathed by Mrs I.M. Andrews, 1970
11 Portrait of Eric Williams, MC, 1954
Oil on canvas
At this late stage in his career Spencer was in demand as a portraitist. Eric Williams was famous for his wartime exploits in the RAF when as a prisoner of war in the notorious Stalag Luft 3 he planned a daring escape, digging a tunnel and using a vaulting horse to cover the debris in the exercise yard. This led to the so-called ‘Wooden Horse’ escape, which featured in his book and a film of the same name. The original commission was for a pencil sketch but Spencer was dissatisfied with it and, for the same fee, painted this oil instead. It took about a fortnight: most time was spent on the stitches of the sitter’s sweater.
Accepted by HM Government in Lieu of Inheritance Tax and allocated to the Stanley Spencer Gallery, Cookham, 2007
12 The Last Supper, 1920
Oil on canvas
The best known of the splendid series of religious pictures Spencer painted during his year’s stay with the Slessers, it was bought by them for £150 and installed in their private chapel in the boat-house. Christ sits before the wall of the grain bin in a Cookham malt-house, while John rests against him at the dramatic moment of the breaking of the bread, when Jesus said, ‘Take, eat; this is my body’. The other disciples are ranged along the sides of a plain table, their limbs forming a strongly marked pattern. In the biblical account, Jesus instituted the Eucharist in an upper room in Jerusalem during his final meal with his disciples. Spencer was pleased with the feeling of seclusion surrounding the sacred event and the unusual quality of light from the low window. The uncluttered architectural setting and substantial rounded figures are clearly reminiscent of Giotto (c1267-1337), one of his favourite painters, whose work he studied in a sixpenny Gowans & Gray volume and in Ruskin’s ‘Giotto and his Works in Padua’.
Acquired by public subscription, 1962
13 Roy, c1907
Pen and ink
Drawn before he entered the Slade, Spencer used pen and ink, a favourite medium for his early drawings. Born in Cookham in 1902, Roy Lacey is thought to be a son of the Laceys who kept the boatyard by the bridge. The boatyard was sold to Turk in 1910 (see no. 10). Roy leans over the back of a pew in the village church of Holy Trinity; with his retentive visual memory it was not unknown for Spencer to return to a motif years later, so that ‘In Church’, 1958, contains a similar figure.
Acquired with assistance from the MGC/V&A Fund and the NACF (now The Art Fund), 1993
14 Domestic Scenes: Neighbours, 1936
Oil on canvas
This is one of nine pictures in the ‘Domestic Scenes’ series of 1935-6, which concentrated on his childhood and marriage to his first wife Hilda Carline; the ‘Domestic Scenes’ were also a part of the ‘Marriage at Cana’ section of the ‘Church House’. Painted from a characteristically high viewpoint, it commemorates the occasions when his elder sister Annie exchanged gifts with her cousin over the hedge at ‘Fernlea’. In this case she receives tulips from the garden at ‘Belmont’ (on the left). Spencer commented on the picture to his dealer Dudley Tooth, ‘It shows the privet hedge which divided our garden from the cousins’ next door. Beyond the wall is the orchard. I do not remember much in the way of flowers in the garden but there were plenty in the next door garden, the family being a family of girls.’ The painting was taken from a squared-up illustration for April in the Chatto & Windus Almanack.
Barbara Karmel Bequest, 1995
15 The Beatitudes of Love: Contemplation, 1938
Oil on canvas
At a time of financial difficulty and personal isolation, after a divorce followed by the immediate failure of his second marriage, Spencer embarked on ‘The Beatitudes of Love’; he withdrew into the realm of his pictures to produce a series depicting couples (‘husbands and wives’) that he hoped to place in cubicles in his projected Church House. An artist firmly rooted in his response to places, he worked instead entirely from imagination, using uncharacteristically plain backgrounds to emphasise the figures, which are amongst the most radically distorted in his oeuvre. Spencer was aware of this, but explained in a later letter, ‘…I love them from within outwards and whatever that outward appearance may be it is an exquisite reminder of what is loved within, no matter what that exterior appearance may be.’ The couple are united by the enfolding rhythm of three hands, whereas the fourth assumes a disturbingly claw-like form, and the woman’s profile is claustrophobically inseparable from the head and huge ear of the man behind. In this picture, he noted, ‘the figures are engaged in contemplation of each other, as is expressed by their rapt gaze, as though they would never stop looking.’
Bequeathed by Sir Frederic Hooper, 1963
16 Cookham from Englefield, 1948
Oil on canvas
The solicitor Gerard Shiel (1884-1974) took a lease on Englefield House in 1940 and moved there permanently after the war. He formed a collection of Spencer’s work which included five commissioned paintings of his house and garden. The men established another bond through their memories of service in Salonika during the First World War, in which Shiel was awarded the MC. He was later a Founder Member and Chairman of the Trustees of the Stanley Spencer Gallery, giving it ‘Sunbathers at Odney’ (no. 5) on its opening in 1962, as well as further works.
Lent by a private collector
17 Englefield House, Cookham, 1951
Oil on canvas
Spencer noted that he painted this third Englefield picture in the afternoons and evenings of July and August 1951. His attention to detail made progress inevitably slow, so that for instance in his picture of ‘The Brew House’ 1957, apple blossom, wisteria and roses appear to bloom simultaneously.
Lent by a private collector
18 Wisteria at Englefield, 1954
Oil on canvas
Spencer spent five weeks on this fourth picture in the series, with its magnificent cascade of chestnut, wisteria and ceanothus, for which his fee was £300 (about twice his pre-war rate). The Englefield works are among his most successfully realised, painstakingly realistic late landscapes.
Lent by a private collector
19 Lilac and Clematis at Englefield, 1955
Oil on canvas
Originally added to the house as a billiard room, this part of the building became the picture gallery in which Gerard Shiel hung his Spencer collection, which was largely devoted to landscapes. In this June painting, he particularly wished the artist to emphasise the colour of the bricks, clematis and rock garden.
Lent by a private collector
20 Study for ‘Christ Preaching at Cookham Regatta’: Sailor, c1952
Chalk
Spencer grew up in the golden age of the Thames regatta, when the river became not just a route for commerce, but a place of entertainment and leisure. Rowing and other skills, previously the province of paid watermen, became popular pastimes for amateurs. Attracting 10,000 people at its peak, the regatta at Cookham followed an established pattern, with races followed by a concert and fireworks. As in Spencer’s Regatta series, fashion dictated that gentlemen wore white trousers, striped flannel coats and straw hats, and ladies elaborate hats and full-length dresses. In this drawing, the sailor holding a Union Jack may be an early idea for the bowsprit of the pleasure steamer, the ‘May Queen’, in the foreground of ‘Christ Preaching at Cookham Regatta’ (no. 8). Steamers were not universally popular, and were nicknamed ‘tea kettles’ on account of their smoke and noise.
Lent by a private collector
21 Study for ‘Christ Preaching at Cookham Regatta’, c1952
Pencil and chalk
This extremely beautiful study, a motif not adopted in the final picture, was one of Spencer’s early ideas for ‘Christ Preaching at Cookham Regatta’. Spencer noted he made ‘heaps of drawings’, but all of them together ‘would have been too enormous to do the picture’.
Lent by a private collector
22 Study for ‘Christ Preaching at Cookham Regatta’: Christ Preaching from the Horse Ferry Barge, c1952
Pencil
In this study for the central section of ‘Christ Preaching at Cookham Regatta’, Christ leans forward, impelled by the urgency of his message to the village. Spencer’s initial idea stemmed from Christ’s preaching from Simon’s boat on the lake of Gennesaret to avoid the press of people on the bank, but as he wrote, it became involved with Cookham Regatta, and ‘…after that it becomes my story, which is Christ in this world and expressing his love for it.’ In the picture, Christ and the disciples sport the straw boaters originally worn by the Watch Committee. As a child Spencer had been taken to Cookham Bridge to see his brothers in the barge, performing in the regatta’s ‘Grand Evening Concerts’.
Lent by a private collector
23 Study for ‘Christ Preaching at Cookham Regatta’: Girls in Punt, with Swans, c1952
Pencil
Study for part of the upper section of ‘Christ Preaching at Cookham Regatta’. Spencer’s brother Gilbert recalled: ‘Those on the river collected themselves in groups, according to rank, and floated about together, looking rather like gay little floating islands’. In planning the picture, Spencer wrote in a letter that ‘the whole of Cookham snobbery will be there.’
Lent by a private collector
24 Study for ‘Christ Preaching at Cookham Regatta’: Woman in a Pink Dress, c1952
Pencil
The outline of the woman is drawn in soft, lead pencil with great sureness and wit. The same size in the picture, she stands near her husband the landlord of the Ferry Hotel who reflects, as Spencer wrote to a friend, ‘no need to look for custom tonight’.
Lent by a private collector
25 Study for ‘Christ Preaching at Cookham Regatta: Listening from Punts’, c1952-4
Pencil
Spencer described in a letter how in the evening after the races, the river craft drifted downstream to be near the concerts in the old horse ferry: ‘It isn’t such a far cry between people listening to Handel and people listening to Christ preaching.’ This is a study for the third work in the Cookham Regatta series, ‘Christ Preaching at Cookham Regatta: Listening from Punts’, 1954. It is also one of two scenes drawn in the upper left-hand section of ‘Christ Preaching at Cookham Regatta’ (no. 8) that appeared as independent pictures. The listeners sport costumes that were de rigueur in the heyday of regattas on the Thames.
Acquired with assistance from the MLA/V & A Purchase Grant Fund, The Art Fund and the Friends of the Stanley Spencer Gallery, 2008
26 The Baptism of Christ, 1940s
Pencil
In this strikingly original image, Christ sits in water surrounded by fish, with distinct changes in skin tone above and below the water. On the right, John the Baptist in animal skins leans forward to baptise Christ; the figure to the left holds Christ’s garment. A small strip near the top indicates that in customary fashion Spencer contemplated a group of related works.
Barbara Karmel Bequest, 1995
27 The Fairy on the Waterlily Leaf, 1910
Pen and ink
Spencer was a student at the Slade when a Miss White of Bourne End commissioned him to illustrate her story of the love of a prince for a fairy. The precision and detail are reminiscent of Pre-Raphaelitism and the best English book illustration. The figures were based on his cousin Dorothy Wooster, the butcher’s daughter, and Edmunds, a professional model at the Slade, who appear by a sandy bank of the Thames where the Spencer children used to play. In one of the artist’s many later inventories of his works, he listed it as ‘Girl standing on water and boy with mandolin on bank’, 1910. Rejected by Miss White who thought the girl too hefty, he gave the drawing as a wedding present to Ruth Lowy, later Lady Gollancz, in 1919.
Bequeathed by Ruth, Lady Gollancz, 1973
Nos 28-29: Chatto & Windus Almanack, 1927
In 1926 Chatto & Windus commissioned Spencer to produce illustrations on domestic and pastoral themes for an Almanack. The artist’s peaceful, lyrical evocation of the seasons is marked by scenes from his childhood, life with friends in London and marriage to Hilda Carline. He was paid £30 for the drawings. It was the only book he illustrated and received favourable reviews: ‘The Observer’ described the drawings as ‘impish and attractive…the smooth pages made one’s pen champ to be at them.’ Spencer made a number of paintings from the illustrations, such as ‘Neighbours’, 1936 (no. 14).
28 The Month of March: Fitting Dress on Table, 1926
Pen and ink
This is a recollection of Spencer’s first wife Hilda standing on the kitchen table in her family home, 47 Downshire Hill in Hampstead. It became the first of the two illustrations for March. On the occasion when Hilda was measured for a wedding dress, the flurry of preparation upset Stanley who broke off the engagement, not for the first time. They were finally married in Wangford church in 1925. The titles of these Chatto drawings, not captioned in the Almanack, are taken from one of Spencer’s hand-written inventories.
Barbara Karmel Bequest, 1995
29 The Month of June: Going on the River, 1926
Pen and ink
With mattress and cushions as in ‘Swan Upping’ (no. 3), and the addition of a hamper worthy of Kenneth Grahame’s Rat, people at Turk’s boatyard prepare to enjoy a summer trip on the Thames.
Presented by the Farquharson Charity and the Friends of the Stanley Spencer Gallery, 1965
30 Beacon Hill, near Highclere, 1927
Oil on canvas
In May 1927 Spencer moved to Burghclere, Hampshire, to work in situ in the Sandham Memorial Chapel. This project absorbed most of his attention until 1932, but he found time to produce some distinguished local landscapes. Beacon Hill, not far away, is crowned with a twelve-acre Iron Age hill-fort whose ramparts follow the hill-top contours. He focused on the foreground, treating Beacon Hill in the distance with a broader touch. Spencer’s landscapes hold no memories, unlike his subject pictures. His approach to the two types of work was radically different: usually he felt bound to depict landscapes with verisimilitude, starting with what lay at his feet, something that he could reach down and touch. The landscapes were always deservedly saleable, but later he felt ambivalent towards them and sometimes resented the financially necessary distraction from his figurative work.
Barbara Karmel Bequest, 1995
31 Unity Spencer: Portrait of Stanley Spencer, 1957
Oil on canvas
The artist Unity Spencer painted this portrait of her father in ‘Cliveden View’. He had asked what she would like to do, suggesting ‘a Kopf’ (head) as he wished to do some reading. Her view includes the rolled-up canvas of ‘Christ Preaching at Cookham Regatta’ (no. 8) on which he was then working. At the time, Spencer was also painting his double portrait of Mr and Mrs Baggett (Stanley Spencer Gallery), who decided to purchase this portrait too.
Bequeathed by Mrs M K Baggett, 1993
Nos 32-38: Scrapbook Drawings from the Astor Collection
In 1939 Spencer began a series of pencil drawings in children’s scrapbooks which he kept for reference for the rest of his career. He regarded the drawings as independent compositions, but he also made a number of paintings from them. The subjects are largely imaginative re-creations of events in his private life, in which he frequently appears. He hoped they would provide material for a ‘Last Day’ series in his ‘Church House’. Spencer wrote of the drawings: ‘In each of these drawings I approach heaven through what I find on earth…All ordinary acts such as the sewing on of a button are religious things and a part of perfection…’
Lent by a private collector
32 Bathers at Odney
Volume 3, 1944-6 (no. 114)
One of several bathers drawings in the third Scrapbook, it is close in composition to the earlier picture, ‘Sunbathers at Odney’ (no. 5). The continuity of theme (another drawing survives from 1921) marked the importance of this aspect of the river in Spencer’s imagination.
33 Christ Preaching from a Boat, 1947
Volume 4 (no. 134)
This is an early idea for the Cookham Regatta series. As Spencer explained, Christ was ‘the most Regatta-ish part of the regatta’, and was there not as a killjoy, but ‘in order that the joy should be fulfilled’.
34 Gladiator, Technical School, Maidenhead
Volume 1, 1939-43 (no. 2)
Spencer received his first professional training at the Maidenhead Technical Institute from 1907-8, a year spent largely in learning how to draw from plaster casts. He inscribed the verso of this drawing: ‘A memory of my days at the Technicle School. Two students are talking to each other by their drawing boards. The local governers (mayor & councillors) are on an official visit. The figure is the Gladiator. Casts are on the shelves & hanging on the wall. And like the comic post card I saw of two tramps saying to each other about a cow in the field, Just think every where it looks it sees something to eat, so here every where one looked there was something to draw or being drawn. On the left is the back of the head of an old lady doing a water colour of rock gooseberry which was always being done. I saw some recently.’
35 Life Room, Slade
Volume 2, 1943-4 (no. 6)
From 1908-12, Spencer was at the Slade, the leading art school of the day, where he was one of the most notable students in a talented generation, winning a scholarship to cover the fees and two major prizes. He emerged as a young artist with a growing reputation. The formidable Professor Tonks trained Slade students to draw from the ‘antique’ and from ‘life’. His emphasis on the use of pencil for drawing and on the importance of form clarified by light and shadow rather than colour, made a lasting impression on Spencer, many of whose later portrait drawings display a mastery of academic procedure and an unmistakable Slade character.
36 Chestnuts
Volume 1, 1939-43 (no.11)
A picture entitled ‘Chestnuts’, c1949, was taken from this drawing and produced as a design for a tapestry woven for the Dovecote Tapestry Company. The figures include a man carrying cabbages, the artist threading chestnuts and Daphne Charlton exploring the bole of a tree. Spencer spent much of 1939 in Leonard Stanley, Gloucestershire, with the painters George and Daphne Charlton, boarding at the White Hart Inn. George was a lecturer at the Slade, where Daphne had been one of his students. Stanley and the exuberant Daphne had an affair during this period. Spencer purchased the scrapbooks in Gloucestershire and a number of the drawings commemorate his life there.
37 Cutting Nails by a Bed
Volume 1, 1939-43 (no. 35)
An intimate drawing of Spencer with Daphne, who in the same scrapbook also feature in ‘Cutting Nails by a Fire’. Both subjects are highly unusual. Although the compositions are squared for transfer, no paintings were made from them.
38 The Farm Gate, 16 June 1946
Volume 4 (no. 136a)
‘The Farm Gate’ 1950, which Spencer presented to the Royal Academy as his Diploma picture, follows the squared-up drawing closely: Hilda and a youthful Stanley open the gate to let the cows into Ovey’s Farm, which he could see from the bedroom window in his boyhood home ‘Fernlea’, just across Cookham High Street. Since it ceased to be a working farm four years before Stanley met Hilda, this is an invented scene, linking a place and person especially meaningful to him.
Catalogue by
Carolyn Leder
©2009