Stanley Spencer Winter Exhibition
5 November 2009 - 28th March 2010
The
Stanley Spencer Gallery winter opening hours are being extended from weekend
opening only to four days a week, for the Winter Exhibition from Thursday
to Sunday each week (11.00am - 4.30pm). The Winter Exhibition opens on
November 5th until March 28th. The exhibition includes 40 paintings and
drawings by Stanley Spencer and a portrait of Stanley by Desmond Chute
(on left). The exhibition features a number of oils from the collection,
as well as pictures on long-term loan.
Stanley’s talent as a portrait painter is exemplified in the Self-Portrait exhibited in the exhibition. Painted in oils in 1923 it is his second self-portrait in his fine series of self-portrait drawings and paintings, from c1913 until his death in 1959, Spencer was honest and uncompromising in recording the changes in his features as well as his feelings about himself. In addition to the formal self-portraits, he appears many times in his subject pictures as a small, boyish figure depicted in generalised terms, along with people who played a role in his real or imaginative life. This second self-portrait sold for 20 guineas in his highly successful, first one-man exhibition at the Goupil Gallery in 1927.
Nine of the works in the exhibition relate to Spencer’s army service, his years at Burghclere or his pictures in the Sandham Memorial Chapel, one of the most powerful and exceptional works of art to emerge from the Great War His friendship at Bristol with Desmond Chute was continued through Spencer’s letters (Stanley Spencer Gallery collection); in May 1916, Spencer wrote to Chute, ‘After breakfast cleaned up for parade at 8:30, paraded & then were told off to several large wagons which we began to shove & hawl [sic] along. It was perfect. I felt as if my soul would bust for joy. It is extraordinary how these experiences quicken my whole being.’
The Chapel itself, commissioned by the Behrends, commemorates his RAMC and infantry service in England and Macedonia during the war. Of direct relevance are his much-handled working drawings for the north and south walls (with additional details sketched in as he proceeded) and a drawing referring to his idea for ‘8 little pictures of incidents happening outside the door of a tent’. His years at Burghclere, painting in the Chapel, are also marked by his landscape of Beacon Hill and drawings of the maid Elsie, ‘When she was working for me at Burghclere our life was as light as the air.’
In 1923, just after he painted his ‘Self-Portrait’ (no. 3),
Spencer wrote to his sister Florence, ‘The other day the Behrends…saw
some recent things of mine & among the things was a scheme of war
pictures. These pictures were a sort of Odyssey of my war experiences,
which I have wanted to do for a long time. They don’t look like war
pictures, they look rather like heaven; a place I am becoming very familiar
with.’ Nine of the works in the exhibition relate to Spencer’s
army service, his years at Burghclere or his pictures in the Sandham Memorial
Chapel, one of the most powerful and exceptional works of art to emerge
from the Great War (nos 3, 30-34, 37-8 & 40). His friendship at Bristol
with Desmond Chute (no. 30) was continued through Spencer’s letters
(Stanley Spencer Gallery collection); in May 1916, Spencer wrote to Chute,
‘After breakfast cleaned up for parade at 8:30, paraded & then
were told off to several large wagons which we began to shove & hawl
[sic] along. It was perfect. I felt as if my soul would bust for joy.
It is extraordinary how these experiences quicken my whole being.’
The Chapel itself, commissioned by the Behrends, commemorates his RAMC
and infantry service in England and Macedonia during the war. Of direct
relevance are his much-handled working drawings for the north and south
walls (with additional details sketched in as he proceeded) and a drawing
referring to his idea for ‘8 little pictures of incidents happening
outside the door of a tent’. His years at Burghclere, painting in
the Chapel, are also marked by his landscape of Beacon Hill and drawings
of the maid Elsie, ‘When she was working for me at Burghclere our
life was as light as the air.’
The exhibition features a number of oils from the collection, as well
as pictures on long-term loan. We are greatly indebted to the continued
generosity of all our lenders.
All the works in the exhibition are by Sir Stanley Spencer RA except
No 30.
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 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 Self-Portrait, 1923
Oil on canvas
In his fine series of self-portrait drawings and paintings, from c1913
until his death in 1959, Spencer was honest and uncompromising in recording
the changes in his features as well as his feelings about himself. In
addition to the formal self-portraits, he appears many times in his subject
pictures as a small, boyish figure depicted in generalised terms, along
with people who played a role in his real or imaginative life. This is
the second of his painted self-portraits, which sold for 20 guineas in
his highly successful, first one-man exhibition at the Goupil Gallery
in 1927. Spencer had painted it at 10 Hill Street, Poole, Dorset, when
he was staying with his friend and fellow-artist Henry Lamb. It was here
that Mary and Louis Behrend saw Spencer’s designs for a chapel based
on his experiences in the RAMC and infantry during the First World War.
In an act of generous and inspired patronage, the Behrends decided to
build a chapel at Burghclere to realise his scheme. Painted with a restricted
palette, but in rich, warm colours, he used the broad brushstrokes and
simplified areas of colour characteristic of Post-Impressionism, in contrast
to his later, tightly detailed style. He wrote to his first wife, Hilda,
‘…I am doing a self-portrait, which will not be any good, I
am afraid, as I have my head in such a position as hardly to be able to
see what I am painting.’ He considered the work incomplete. At the
age of 32, his still noticeably youthful appearance is mirrored in Hilda’s
only surviving oil portrait of him (private collection) and in contemporary
photographs.
Barbara Karmel Bequest, 1995
4 Domestic Scenes: At the Chest of Drawers, 1936
Oil on canvas
One of the ‘Domestic Scenes’ series of 1935-6, painted after
his resignation from the Royal Academy (see ‘The Scarecrow’,
no. 2). Deliberately less controversial, the ‘Domestic Scenes’
were exhibited with some critical and commercial success in his one-man
exhibition at Tooth’s in 1936. The series featured an idealised version
of married life with his first wife Hilda, as well as his childhood. As
he wrote, ‘I love painting this kind of picture, and I shall be very
sad to part with any of them.’ This is linked to the ‘Marriage
at Cana’ series for the ‘Church House’ (see no. 1). Two
guests, Stanley and Hilda, their figures interlocked in a shallow space,
choose clothes to wear to the wedding feast. Collars spill out of a drawer
and a hot water bottle nestles in the unmade bed. Ironically Spencer decided
to celebrate the joys of marriage at a time his own actions were leading
to his divorce. He presented himself as a diminutive man dominated by
an exaggeratedly large woman, a recurring theme at the time.
Lent by a private collector
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 Study for ‘The Betrayal’, 1914
Pencil and wash
This is one of two studies for Spencer’s first version of ‘The
Betrayal’ (no. 8), which preserves the basic composition whilst altering
a number of details. ‘The Betrayal’ belongs to the fine series
of early works he painted in a mood of great confidence: ‘When I
left the Slade and went back to Cookham I entered a kind of earthly paradise.
Everything seemed fresh and to belong to the morning…’
Presented by the Friends of the Stanley Spencer Gallery, 1978
8 The Betrayal, 1914
Oil on canvas
Two soldiers arrest Jesus in a setting based on the adjoining back gardens
of the Spencer home ‘Fernlea’, and ‘The Nest’, in
Cookham High Street. The unusual naked figure fleeing the scene is recorded
in Mark’s Gospel: ‘And there followed him a certain young man,
having a linen cloth cast about his naked body; and the young men laid
hold on him: And he left the linen cloth, and fled from them naked.’
On the left, in an earlier incident, Simon Peter cuts off the ear of the
High Priest’s servant. The pusillanimous disciples pause by the oast-houses
to peep over a wall at their Master.
Acquired with assistance from the MGC/V & A Fund, 1984
9 Christ Overturning the Money Changers’ Table, 1921
Oil on canvas
Painted at the Slessers’ house in Bourne End this picture was designed
to form the right wing of a triptych in their chapel (see ‘The Last
Supper’, no. 15). The left wing was to be ‘St Veronica Unmasking
Christ’ (no. 10), while the central panel was a larger version of
the overturning theme. He planned the two ‘overturning’ panels
simultaneously. In a letter of 21 March 1921 to Hilda Carline (whom he
married in 1925), Spencer sketched both compositions, adding of this version,
‘And here you have another on the same idea. I like it.’ It
illustrates Christ’s cleansing of the temple (Matthew 21:12), ‘And
Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and
bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and
the seats of them that sold doves.’ The chapel setting turned Spencer’s
thoughts to Renaissance art and the triptych format, though in the event
the works were never hung together in this way.
Presented by Mrs E M Tooth in memory of Mr Dudley Tooth, 1972
10 St Veronica Unmasking Christ, 1921
Oil on canvas
This was probably the last of three panels to be painted for a projected
triptych (see no. 9). The legend of St Veronica is that as an act of charity
she took her veil, or a linen cloth, and wiped the face of Christ as he
was bearing his cross to Calvary, thereby gaining a miraculous imprint
of his features. The saint’s pose deliberately follows that of Christ
in the right-hand wing, as Spencer later recorded: ‘The idea was
suggested to me when I was drawing this notion I had of a single figure
of Christ overturning a table, by the appearance of Christ’s raised
arms and the cloth hanging down around him, suggesting an echo of this
same form in the veil of Veronica, than by any emotion directly affecting
the compositional form as a result of contemplating the significance of
the story.’ The pose works well, both separately and as a pair. Bold
and simple in design, the two pictures are painted in the soft, subtle
colours Spencer used so well at the time.
Presented by Mrs E M Tooth in memory of Mr Dudley Tooth, 1972
11 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. 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. In centre foreground, Mr Brooks the
ferryman brandishes an impressive array of boating equipment, though as
Spencer noted, the figure was inspired by Mr Turk, of Turk’s boatyard,
‘leaning on a great armful of oars, etc.’ 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. Six related drawings are on show (nos 23-28), some of which
include motifs not adopted in the final picture.
Lent by a private collector
12 View from Cookham Bridge, 1936
Oil on canvas
Painted many years before ‘Christ Preaching at Cookham Regatta’
(no. 11), 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 Holy Trinity church and Turk’s boatyard, 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. Frederick
Turk, the Queen’s Swan Master, whose family had been on the river
for about 200 years, hired out boats such as the punts in the foreground;
the boathouse burnt down some years ago.
Accepted by HM Government in Lieu of Inheritance Tax and allocated
to the Stanley Spencer Gallery, Cookham, 2003
13 Portrait of Mr and Mrs Baggett, 1956-7
Oil on canvas
Commissioned as a single portrait of either sitter, Spencer chose instead
to paint them together with startling immediacy in their Highgate dining
room (90A Highgate High Street), with its view of the graveyard and Highgate
School Chapel. The graveyard was used by Highgate Anglicans until the
erection of a parish church in the early nineteenth century. The view
is clearly recognisable today. Spencer rejected a patterned dress for
Mrs Baggett, as the time taken to paint it would increase the cost of
the picture; a direct commission, without a dealer’s fee, the double
portrait cost 250 guineas. He began on the canvas by lightly drawing in
the composition in charcoal. As an RA, Spencer exhibited the picture at
the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition, 1957.
Bequeathed by Mrs M K Baggett, 1993
14 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
15 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
16 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. 12). 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 Purchase Grant Fund
and the NACF (now The Art Fund), 1993
17 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 xchanged 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
18 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
19 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
20 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
21 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
22 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
23 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. 11).
Steamers were not universally popular, and were nicknamed ‘tea kettles’
on account of their smoke and noise.
Lent by a private collector
24 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
25 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
26 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
27 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
28 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. 11) that appeared as independent pictures.
The isteners 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
29 The Garage Proprietor, 1931
Pencil
This is thought to be a portrait of Eddie Remington, a former pilot with
the Royal Flying Corps, who opened a garage in Cookham in the 1920s. He
raced GN Frazer Nash cars, practising up and down the High Street.
Presented by Bronwen Astor, 1968
30 Desmond Chute: Portrait of Stanley Spencer, May 1916
Pencil
Spencer liked to give a highly coloured and slightly doctored account
of his initial meeting with Desmond Chute at the Beaufort War Hospital,
Bristol, in November 1915: ‘I was amazed to note that this youth
in a beautiful civilian suit was walking towards me as if he meant to
speak to me; the usual visitors to the hospital passed us orderlies by
as they would pass a row of bedpans.’ Although four years younger
than Spencer, Chute’s friendship would introduce Spencer to classical
literature, and in their discussions of religion and walks around Clifton,
would provide Spencer with much needed solace from institutional life
in which the hospital was a power unto itself. Chute had spent a brief
period at the Slade from 1913 until the outbreak of war, and this drawing
was made on the eve of Spencer’s departure from Bristol. From 1916
to 1926 Spencer wrote a notable series of letters to Chute, which are
now in the collection of the Stanley Spencer Gallery. Begun as soon as
he left the Beaufort War Hospital, they describe his further military
service, training with the RAMC at Tweseldown Camp near Farnham and then
in the RAMC and infantry in Salonika; the final letters were written after
the end of the war and his return to England. Vivid, imaginative and compellingly
written, they have a numinous quality and contain reflections on a diverse
range of topics, from his voracious reading, to art, music and religion.
A Roman Catholic, Chute was later a member of Eric Gill’s Guild of
St Joseph and St Dominic at Ditchling Common, leaving to become ordained
as a Dominican priest and to live abroad, mostly in Rapallo.
Acquired from the estate of Desmond Chute, via Walter Shewring, 1966
31 Head of a Boy, 1930
Pencil
A notable draughtsman, Spencer produced a large corpus of drawings, either
for imaginative compositions or, as here, observed from life. In the late
1920s and early 1930s, he became prolific in the field of portrait drawing,
developing an interest in the use of pencil for sensitive contours and
soft shading. ‘Head of a Boy’ shows his mastery of academic
procedure and an unmistakable Slade character. Executed in 1930, when
Spencer was living at Burghclere, the sitter may be a local boy.
Barbara Karmel Bequest, 1995
32 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 a few 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
33 & 34 Two Studies for the Sandham Memorial Chapel, Burghclere,
1923
Pencil and sepia wash
Spencer’s mural decorations in the Sandham Memorial Chapel, 1927-1932,
commemorating his experience of military service in Bristol and Macedonia
during the First World War, are one of the great achievements of twentieth
century painting. Staying with his friend Henry Lamb in Poole, he produced
these studies, ‘a whole architectural scheme of the pictures’.
Together with other drawings, they were seen that summer by Louis and
Mary Behrend who decided to build a chapel to house the projected paintings.
It was to be a memorial to Mary’s brother, Lieutenant Henry Willoughby
Sandham, RASC, who died from an illness contracted on service in Macedonia.
These are the much-used working drawings for the north and south walls.
There are significant differences between the drawings and the final scheme,
notably his original intention to depict an operating theatre (N wall,
third bay from the left). As early as 1916, he had written to Desmond
Chute (Stanley Spencer Gallery collection): ‘I should love to do
a fresco of an operation I told you about. And have the incision in the
belly in the middle of the picture & all the forceps radiating from
it like this. It is wonderful how mysterious the hands look, wonderfully
intense.’
Presented by Mr J L Behrend through the Friends of the Stanley Spencer
Gallery, 1972
Nos 35-41: 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
35 The Woolshop
Volume 1, 1939-43 (no. 18)
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. The painting of ‘The Woolshop’ 1939
was taken from this drawing, which shows Spencer and Daphne Charlton in
Stonehouse, near Leonard Stanley, checking wool against her sweater. As
Daphne explained to the present writer, her sister-in-law had sent her
a yellow jersey, so Daphne, George and Stanley went to buy wool to make
matching socks. She additionally commented that the woman’s face
is a composite of Daphne and Hilda, Spencer telling Daphne, ‘you
mustn’t mind if I put a bit of Hilda in’.
36 Fetching Shoes
Volume 1, 1939-43 (no. 24)
‘A part of the religious expression of desire. All things such as
these incidents, the many ordinary happenings between two lovers is all
a part of the love experience. They make love through everything between
themselves.’ The figures almost certainly represent the artist and
Daphne in Gloucestershire.
37 Drawing Elsie
Volume 2, 1943-4 (no. 57)
A larger, more detailed version of a tiny sketch in Volume 1, this was
designed for his projected ‘Church House’, as a panel in the
‘Servants Hall’ scheme which later became the Elsie ‘chapel’.
In 1928 Elsie Munday came for some years to work as a maid for the Spencers
at Burghclere (the setting for this drawing), as well as at Cookham and
Hampstead. She is shown in a number of drawings, cheerfully engaged in
domestic tasks. Spencer described her life as: ‘Cinemas motorbikes
boys & local socials & calling on friends & going off on jaunts
& shopping & sending presents to innumerable baby nephews &
nieces & quick & not prolonged chats to the tradesmen & then
ironing & washing & picking beans & pulling off brussells
sprouts & yet judicious & reflective in it all. The sound in the
morning below my window of the wood being demolished to bits for the kitchen
& dining room fires. Much singing of common love songs.’
38 Taking in Washing, Elsie
Volume 2, 1943-4 (no. 61a)
As Elsie collects stockings, a Holy Ghost figure holds a basket of pegs
and Stanley kneels by the fence with his sketchbook. In 1941 he had already
described how he was ‘interested in the way she took stockings off
the line, she quickly took several of the feet of the stockings into her
hand, which caused them to become fanshaped and then unpegged them so
that they flopped over her arms & shoulders like dead leaves…’.
He discussed his feelings for Elsie in the Scrapbooks: ‘Although
[she] was “just” a servant we had & a very good one, she
was something that has been a great part of my thought. If there was any
affection it was never made known...Both loved our work & life &
could therefore sincerely sympathize & compare notes. If there was
a family outing all would be well if left to her to arrange…’.
39 Patricia Shopping
Volume 2, 1943-4 (no. 96)
In May 1937, Spencer married Patricia Preece four days after his divorce
from Hilda. The few Scrapbook drawings of Patricia show her in Cookham
before this unsuccessful marriage: they never lived together. In 1938
Spencer itemised jewellery purchased for Patricia before the debacle of
their marriage: seven rings, six bracelets, seven necklaces and three
pendants (not necessarily a comprehensive list). His extravagant spending
is commemorated in this Maidenhead street scene, depicting Stanley with
a slim and sophisticated Patricia, a Holy Ghost figure at her feet. Spencer’s
‘Church House’ scheme underwent frequent modification, but it
evolved to include ‘chapels’ dedicated to Hilda, Patricia, Elsie
and Daphne.
40 Pinning a Shirt to Dry on Tent, 1946
Volume 4 (no. 116a)
Spencer wrote to Chute in 1916 that, ‘The camps & tents make
me want to do a big fresco painting.’ He returned to the notion of
tents in a letter to Hilda of 31 May 1923, when he outlined a plan for
eight flanking panels for ‘The Resurrection of the Soldiers’
in the future Sandham Memorial Chapel. These panels, never painted, were
to be ‘quite small, of incidents occurring outside tent doors…,
a man lacing up a tent door for the night, a man pinning his handkerchief
on the tent to dry. There will be one of men having their rations brought
to the tent door,…Another will be “lights out” – a
man tapping the tent with a stick.’ Others were to be camouflaging
a tent, men sitting outside a tent, men walking round a tent hammering
the pegs in and a closed-up tent. Army ridge and bell tents subsequently
featured in three of the Chapel paintings. Much later, in this drawing,
he reverted to the tent idea, substituting a shirt for the handkerchief
adumbrated in 1923.
41 Raising of Jairus’s Daughter
Volume 3, 1944-6 (no. 125)
Drawn at Port Glasgow during the Second World War, Spencer used this study
for the centre panel of his Port Glasgow Resurrection triptych, ‘The
Resurrection with the Raising of Jairus’s Daughter’, 1947 (Southampton
City Art Gallery). Behind a homely geranium on a windowsill, Christ points
to heaven and clasps the hand of the child He brought back to life, who
now sits up on the bed. In the Bible (Mark 5: 22-24, 35-43) the unbelievers
were firmly ejected, whereas with typical tolerance Spencer allowed them
to remain, though they turn away unaware of the miracle. There are a number
of differences between the drawing and painting, including the omission
of the five foreground figures.
Catalogue by Carolyn Leder ©2009
Cover illustration: Self-Portrait, 1923 (no. 3)