He studied at the Slade School of Art, where his contemporaries included Dora Carrington, Paul Nash, David Bomberg and C.R.W. He was born in 1891 in the historic village of Cookham, which would play a pivotal role in his art. List of works Featured works (10) All Artworks by Date 1→10 (273) All Artworks by Date 10→1 (273) All Artworks by Name (273) High resolution (1) Styles Neo-Romanticism (273) Series The Beatitudes of Love (7) Sandham Memorial Chapel (16) Shipbuilding on the Clyde (20) Port Glasgow Resurrection (7) Domestic … By Professor Andrew Causey (February 4, 2014), By Sian Pattenden / Click & Collect. The work came about after Spencer was approached by the British War Memorials Committee to produce an image of a religious service at the front. Although this work owes something to European modernism, Spencer set himself apart at an early age. It seems clear then that this painting is a family portrait. As an ongoing project, the painter designed and worked towards "Church House", intended (although never built) as an enclosed sacred space made up of various chapel dedicated to his lovers, Preece, Hilda Carline (his first wife), Elise Munday, Daphne Charlton, and Charlotte Murray all included. Sir Stanley Spencer, 'Riveters' from Shipbuilding on the Clyde (detail), 1941, Courtesy of the Imperial War Museum Stanley Spencer's Shipbuilding on the Clyde series represents, in the words of Stanley Spencer Gallery Curator Carolyn Leder, 'one of the most remarkable artistic records of the Second World War'. Painted when the artist was still young, we can just about see here the marked difference between Spencer's left and right eye. The Times described it as "the most important picture painted by any English artist in the present century". "Stanley Spencer Artist Overview and Analysis". Love reveals and more accurately describes the nature and meaning of things than any mere lecture on technique can do. In 1932 he became an Associate of the Royal Academy and also exhibited at the prestigious Venice Biennale. As a student, Spencer was a member of the Slade Sketch Club. Hauser adds: "The simplified forms and bold use of color of his early work have something in common with Gauguin in particular. The Love, Art, Loss: The Wives of Stanley Spencer is an exhibition focusing on Hilda Carline and Patricia Preece, the two wives of the renowned British artist. His works concentrate on descriptive detail, incident and anecdote, which combined with his visionary and imaginative spiritualism … However, he also developed a highly personal visual style. Description: Stanley Spencer (1891-1959) British "Landscape Composition" pencil on paper. Despite his divorce, his relationship with Hilda never really ended. Unity Spencer: Portrait of Stanley Spencer – 1957 – Painting, Oil on canvas, 506mm x 607mm. It is Stanley Spencer's masterpiece and is arguably one of the greatest modern British artistic schemes ever conceived." January 7, 2017. August 11 2007, By Craig Brown / Stanley Spencer is best known for his huge paintings that treat British village life in the manner of Renaissance frescoes, such as his masterpiece The Resurrection, Cookham, in which the lives (and deaths) of ordinary folk are tenderly offered up to our gaze.. Art.com pay us small commissions based on any prints or paintings that you buy as a result of … The portrait is testament both to the artist's skill and to his intense and determined character. His work is sometimes described as quintessentially English, yet his is often a distorted, even grotesque vision of rural and industrial Britain. The Estate of Stanley Spencer and their presence hold all necessary copyrights and licences for all of his paintings and other works. from Amazon Stanley Spencer was one of the most significant British artists of the inter-war period. Wounded being carried by mules Macedonia -1918-1919 – Pen and wash on paper, 492mm x 390mm Rejected by both Carline and Preece, who appropriated his house and left him with neither home nor income, he continued to work on the series known as "Christ in the Wilderness" while living in Gloucestershire close to George and Daphne Charlton. In "The Dustman", the dustman's beatified face as his wife lifts him into the air reflects both sexual and religious ecstasy, while his awestruck relatives and friends offer him a cabbage leaf, a teapot and a jam jar from the bin. He wanted this work to be a scene of redemption. Love is the essential power in the creation of art and love is not a talent. Stanley Spencer was British painter known for his depictions of Christian themes in contemporary settings. ", "Knowing what to paint, gives me the appetite for painting. In many of his works, particularly the original war paintings and those with an overtly religious theme, Spencer takes an odd, oblique perspective, as if hovering slightly above the participants, looking into the scene. June 6 2007, By Harriet Sherwood / Stanley Spencer Gallery As a reviewer in The Times observed in December 1932, the chapel was an 'imaginative interpretation of incidents which impressed the artist in the course of his daily duties, and their great merit – as a memorial – is that they do not go outside either his practical or his emotional experience as an individual.' In his twenties, just before the outbreak of war, Spencer began to paint this seasonal incidence of the bizarre within the regular rhythms of everyday rural life. As well as his marriages, he is known to have had at least two other relationships. Here too, the theme of resurrection would be transformative. The series is now an important Imperial War Museum exhibit. The Stanley Spencer Gallery is located in Cookham, Berkshire, and is dedicated to the life and work of Sir Stanley Spencer. £1.75 postage. Religion, sex and war were topics he often painted. Artist and … Cookham is famous for its Swan Upping ceremony, during which, in Spencer’s day, the Thames swans were caught and marked on the beak by officials of the Crown and the Vintners' and Dyers' Companies. When passing a cemetery one evening, Spencer had a sudden revelation that this was the hill of resurrection. Eventually, William Spencer obtained the patronage of Lord and Lady Boston to find a place for Stanley at the Maidenhead Technical Institute. 8" x 6-1/2" sight size. Although Spencer studied at the Slade School of Art, he traveled home every evening to have dinner with his family and remained estranged from other influential artists of his day. Sir Stanley Spencer, (born June 30, 1891, Cookham, Berkshire, England—died December 14, 1959, Taplow, Buckinghamshire), one of the leading painters in England between the World Wars. Though Spencer employed realistic tones and colors, he often distorted forms and spatial planes to expressive ends, as seen in his The Resurrection, Cookham (1924–1927). It was a project that was never completed. In fact, the word eccentric is frequently applied to the Spencers, William (also known as Par) and Anna Caroline Spencer and their numerous children. As an early work, the painting looks forward to themes that will recur throughout Spencer's career, and although loosely painted in the far ground, shows as well the tight and rigorous attention to detail of which he is capable in the foreground. The relationship was literally laid bare in "Double Nude Portrait: The Artist and his Second Wife" also known as the "Leg of mutton nude". Stanley Spencer (1891–1959) became an important figure in British art during the first half of the twentieth century. Stanley Spencer received his knighthood in 1958. Cookham, the village which he loved and where he spent most of his life, becomes the location for extraordinary events; the dead are resurrected and mingle with angels and Biblical characters in an everyday fashion. His work is unflattering and completely human, devoid of pity, yet rich in compassion and redemption. Copies still circulate. He had two principle interests; sex and biblical narrative and the two sit quite jarringly and unsettlingly - sometimes even creating a perverse or sinister tone - when married explicitly together. In the lower right corner of the frame a man walks away from the scene looking back at the hospital. He had two principle interests; sex and biblical narrative and the two sit quite jarringly and unsettlingly - sometimes even creating a perverse or sinister tone - when married explicitly together. Spencer was born in Cookham, Berkshire, in 1891. Related Links . Lack of fulfilment, consummation or completion apply to both of his marriages. The relationship with his wife and family during his relationship was represented in his 1927 portrait "Hilda, Unity and Dolls", in which Hilda's body language clearly expresses her feelings, while Spencer's daughter Unity gazes out of the image, creating the connection that cannot be cut between husband and wife. The hospital glows in hope of savior against the pessimism of the dark night. The dead grow from the ground like plants, pushing aside the wire and fallen crosses to reach out to one another. He died on December 14th 1959 and his ashes were buried in Cookham Churchyard. The portrait puts Spencer's face alongside the great and the good in the history of art, while by contrast, hung humbly for years in the front bedroom of Fernlea, the Spencer family home in Cookham-on-Thames. Free postage. Nonetheless, Spencer was reconciled with the new President of the Royal Academy after the retirement of Munnings. In sex was to be found redemption, the conquering of death and the hope of resurrection. Stanley was the eighth of those that survived. However, the themes and approaches owe as much to English writers and painters with their focus on the local, the personal and an ability to portray both darkness and innocence simultaneously. This ongoing project further highlights the artist's pioneering interest in uniting explicit sex and religion, something quite common in Eastern devotion (for example, sacred temples in India decorated by the female yoni, symbol of the vagina), but considered shocking as relatively unheard of in Christianity. Having observed the dead and dying around him, he began to see sex as the answer, the response to death, literally and inspirationally. Between 1939 and 1945, Spencer produced the “Shipbuilding on the Clyde” series, with the first purchased paintings "Burners" and "Welders" displayed in a WAAC sponsored National Gallery exhibition in May 1941. There is a sense of awe, yet also once again the everyday is present in the images of floor cleaning, making beds, "Filling Tea Urns" and "Sorting and Moving Kit Bags". This was for a chapel of love that married the domestic and the religious, in which even lavatories and fireplaces played a transcendent role. St Francis of Assisi came in for particular criticism, being viewed as little more than a caricature. Throughout this period Spencer was periodically returning to Epsom where Hilda and the children were living. The Resurrection; waking up fetched £770,000 at Christie's early in 1990, and in May of that year his Crucifixion (1958) fetched £1,320,000. As art historian Kitty Hauser said: "The world did not always please Spencer, or bend to his wishes, and in his art he sought to create a painted world that was not subject to the same laws as the real one. His mother, who had not even wanted him to go to school, was opposed to this and persuaded him to join the Royal Army Medical Corps. The Church-House would fully develop his concept of Cookham as Heaven, with paintings expressing the transformational power of erotic love. Stanley Spencer was one of the leading artists in England during the early 20th century. Spencer's own redemption came in the form of a commission from the War Artists' Advisory Committee, or WAAC, organised through his agent Dudley Tooth and the Secretary of the WAAC, E.M.O'R. Highlights are Hilda Carline’s defiant early self-portrait (on loan from Tate), Spencer’s own portrait of Patricia Preece (on loan from Southampton City Art Gallery) and a rarely seen self-portrait from Patrica Preece’s partner Dorothy Hepworth. Sir Stanley Spencer, CBE RA (30 June 1891 – 14 December 1959) was an English painter. Picking fruits from the trees, the viewer is of course reminded of the literal Garden of Eden making thus Spencer's parents and the family that they create comparable to the first romantic union and the fruits that it bore, a metaphor for creation itself. The Guardian / Accepting the commission, Spencer dismissed the suggested subject matter, opting instead to depict "'God in the bare real things, in a limber wagon, in ravines, in fouling mule lines." For Stanley Spencer, love was like imagination. £88.35. Par taught music and the family was encouraged to be creative, Stanley and his brother Gilbert taking lessons with a local artist called Dorothy Bailey. English painter, one of the most original figures in 20th-century British art. This resulted in the extraordinary series of paintings of workers at Lithgows Shipyard on the River Clyde. Shortly afterwards, he was diagnosed with cancer. The prompt for this drawing was from the biblical book of Ecclesiates, ‘Man Goeth to his long Home’. ©2021 The Art Story Foundation. The sensuous form of Preece sprawls across the centre of the image, legs apart, while Spencer, naked but wearing glasses, sits behind her rather awkwardly, more voyeur than husband. The books and articles below constitute a bibliography of the sources used in the writing of this page. On the battlefields of WWI, soldiers raised from the dead reach out to one another through barbed wire and barricades of fallen crosses. ", "A person is a place's fulfillment, as a place is a person's.". The Observer / The Stanley Spencer’s Gallery’s Spring exhibition, Love, Art, Loss: The Wives of Stanley Spencer opened its … In this phrase he once more joins the sense of the religious ("The Last Supper") with sexual yearning and redemption, along with a bleak and self-deprecating sense of humour that is sometimes overlooked in critiques of his work. Photograph: Family handout The artist’s grandson, John Spencer, told the Guardian that Spencer’s full story would finally be told, “warts and all”. Other works are from the Stanley Spencer Gallery collection, private owners and other galleries. Preece was the long-term lover of artist Dorothy Hepworth, and she maintained this relationship throughout her marriage to Spencer. Interestingly though, unity seems to give birth to division, for although the adult couple are bound together, the young girls and young boys turn their back upon one another, as though there is a lack of comprehension and involvement between the male and female characters of the next generation. Cookham, 14 Dec. 1959). The Wives of Stanley Spencer are the subject of a new exhibition Love, Art, Loss at the Stanley Spencer Gallery in Cookham, Berkshire. Kenneth Pople (1919-2008) studied the art and writings of Stanley Spencer for some thirty years. The family was comfortably off, but not rich enough to send Stanley to a private school, so he was educated at home by his sisters. He wrote the acclaimed centenary biography, Stanley Spencer, published by Collins in 1991 (to which this website is an updated supplement.) He had been engaged to Hilda for several years, always postponing the actual marriage day until 1925, and within four years had begun his lasting obsession with Preece. £39.99 . Spencer's family was an unconventional one. He was briefly part of the Slade group known as the Neo-Primitives. The central couple, with their arms entwined, metamorphose to become a stable and rooted tree. 1950 Sir Stanley Spencer Artist Painter By Irving Penn Vintage Photogravure Art. His agent ensured that he received regular payment for his commission in Glasgow, despite Spencer's notorious refusal to sign any agreements. or Best Offer. The image well professes the calm comfort of Spencer's childhood, anchored by the dual influence of his parents. The misshapen and fantastic images he created have their own persuasive appeal, as though the artist viewed the world through a deformed yet illuminating lens and invited the observer to look through it too. Spencer wrote in a letter to his wife Hilda: "One would have thought that the scene was a sordid one... but I felt there was grandeur... all those wounded men were calm and at peace with everything, so the pain seemed a small thing with them." Author and Spencer fan Sîan Pattendon visited the 2008 Spencer exhibition at Tate Liverpool. Opened in 1962, it is housed within a former Wesleyan Chapel in the High Street, a few minutes’ walk from the house where Spencer was born and where he used to worship. All Rights Reserved, Stanley Spencer: Art as a Mirror of Himself, Sex and spirituality: Stanley Spencer's 'visions' return to Cookham, Stanley Spencer's daughter, Unity, on life amid the most bizarre domestic soap opera in British art history, The painter who found heaven in hell: Loveable painter Stanley Spencer's autobiography reveals the depth of his artistic vision, Jon Snow visits 'Britain's Sistine Chapel' for Channel 4 News, Sister Wendy Beckett on Stanley Spencer's Self Portrait with Patricia Preece, Travoys Arriving with Wounded at a Dressing-Station at Smol, Macedonia, September 1916 (1919). Watching, and painting, the death and destruction around him, he would later reveal that 'I had buried so many people and saw so many dead bodies that I felt that death could not be the end of everything'. He was profoundly affected by the experience of World War I, which shattered his insularity having previously only known the life of an idyllic childhood. Stanley Spencer: List of works - All Artworks by Date 1→10. Oil painting - Estate of Stanley Spencer 1919 Travoys Arriving with Wounded at a Dressing-Station at Smol, Macedonia, September 1916 This muddy work, depicted in browns, blacks and ochres, shows men bringing wounded soldiers to a field hospital on stretchers. His contemporaries called him "Cookham" because of his attachment to his home. His bandaged arm is lit up in positivity against the otherwise dark background. The meat-like yet somehow illuminated quality of the living human flesh has been seen as prefiguring the work of Lucian Freud. Spencer made precise observational work and engaged deeply with historical art. In his visionary paintings, he deliberately distorted scale and combined closely observed and imagined elements. It is the same moody and unpredictable inner psychological drama that the likes of Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud will go on to explore. He was a master at creating large, heroic, and sprawling multi-figure compositions. Spencer's intention, like that of many artists, was to unite opposites - to align the body and spirit and the scared and profane in order to see the whole picture of life. This … The Port Glasgow work is in many ways reminiscent of Spencer's war paintings. During WWI he was given a copy of Saint Augustine's, Revealing himself as a romantic (he admired the poetry of John Donne and. Spencer referred to Cookham as "a village in Heaven" and … Within the naive realism of this work, Spencer set a theme that would endure throughout his career, that of finding the spiritual in the everyday. These also suggest some accessible resources for further research, especially ones that can be found and purchased via the internet. Blind stamped at lower left, Stanley Spencer Studio Sale. From this experience, he would return again and again to themes of death, sex, redemption and resurrection. The paintings of camp life reflect a strong desire for order and the domestic, obsessions for the majority of soldiers who simply wanted to return to "Blighty", hearth and home. In fact, the character of the saint was based on Spencer's own father and it is difficult today to see how this painting could have been described as so offensive. As well as looking forward to art of the future, the influence of the Old Masters is incredibly clear in this work; the deep, dark background and the strongly modeled form is reminiscent of a work by Vermeer or Rembrandt. Was: £110.44. Spencer resigned from the Royal Academy. The village residents became the characters in his painting and the landscape the stage setting for his mysterious scenes; he therefore successfully deals with universal themes coming from a local starting point. A highly eccentric and isolated figure, writers and art historians often brush quickly over Spencer's awkward and difficult work. However, throughout his life Spencer's work would defy categorisation or compartmentalisation as part of any major art movement. And his psychologically intriguing paintings represent an extension of this weird and wonderful personality. Spencer had already stipulated that the "Leg of mutton nude" would never be exhibited in his lifetime. The value of Spencer's paintings soared after a retrospective exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1980. There is dynamism in the composition, in the medics' movement and in the way the wounded travel upwards, towards the light of the operating theatre in a clear spiritual reference. All prints, paintings and photos included in www.StanleySpencer.org are provided as an affiliate to Art.com who hold necessary permissions. One of these was with Daphne Charlton, wife of the artist George Charlton, with whom he went to stay after the inevitable disintegration of his relationship with Preece. However, in Spencer's case, personally obsessed with sex due to unsatisfactory relationships, and with religion etched on the mind having had daily Christian stories recited at home as a child, his depiction of such subjects come with added intensity. This muddy work, depicted in browns, blacks and ochres, shows men bringing wounded soldiers to a field hospital on stretchers. War intervened, and he eventually returned to this work with difficulty after serving on the Eastern Front for over two years. Shortly after leaving the Slade School of Art, Spencer became well known for his paintings depicting Biblical scenes occurring as if in Cookham, the small village beside the River Thames where he was born and spent much of his life. His art reflects an intensely Christian faith yet is like no orthodox or even nonconformist vision. The theme of redemptive sex is also present, if ironically, in the series of controversial nude portraits of Spencer and his second wife Patricia Preece, which the artist produced in the 1930s. In 1908 he went to the Slade School of Art in London to study among artists who would become luminaries of the twentieth century, including Paul Nash, Dora Carrington, Mark Gertler and Isaac Rosenberg. Though he painted a variety of subjects he is best known, and loved, for his paintings that fuse everyday life with religious themes. Stanley Spencer was one of the leading figures in British art between the World Wars. Boston to find a place is a person is a family Portrait 1891-1959... Illuminated quality of the sources used in the creation of art and love is the essential in... 787Mm x 1016mm exhibition at the hospital glows in hope of savior against the pessimism of the Slade of! 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