Stanley Spencer (painter)

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Photograph by Stanley Spencer, around 1915

Sir Stanley Spencer CBE RA (born June 30, 1891 in Cookham , Berkshire , † December 14, 1959 in Cliveden , Buckinghamshire ) was a British painter .

Life

Stanley was the sixth son of eleven children of the organist and music teacher William Spencer and his wife Anne. He attended Maidenhead Technical College . He received his first drawing lessons from Dorothy Bailey, who urged him to continue studying in London . A scholarship enabled Spencer to study under Henry Tonks at the renowned Slade School of Fine Art in 1908 and won the advancement award for the picture The Birth (1912). During his studies he met Paul Nash , Christopher Nevinson , William Roberts , Mark Gertler , Phyllis Gardner and David Bomberg , among others . Later in the 1920s he joined the New English Art Club with Paul Nash, Henry Tonks, Mark Gertler and Duncan Grant .

When World War I broke out, Spencer enlisted as a volunteer with the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) to avoid serving on the weapon. After his training in the military hospital in Bristol , he came to Greece in 1916 and then to Macedonia , where he served as a medic. Spencer spent two and a half years in Macedonia, from where he did not return to Cookham until December 1918, suffering from malaria .

left: Hilda with her mother Annie Carline and daughter Shirin; right: Stanley in conversation with Patricia Preece and Dorothy Hepworth, 1929

In 1919 Spencer met the painter Hilda Carline (1889–1950) know and love. Six years later they married in Wangford , Suffolk , and their relationship resulted in two daughters, Shirin (* 1925) and Unity (* 1930). In 1932 the Spencer family moved to Lindworth. He fell in love with the painter Patricia Preece (1894-1966), who exhibited the work of her lesbian lover, Dorothy Hepworth, under her own name. After a stay in Switzerland , he separated from his wife. Four days after the divorce (1937) he married Patricia. During the honeymoon in St Ives , his wife's mistress, Dorothy Hepworth, was also present. The couple never lived together, and it appears that the marriage was never consummated. He processed his sexual frustration in his pictures by painting the female nude with wrinkles. The following year he separated from his second wife. In the 1940s, Stanley Spencer led a ménage à trois together with his befriended painter couple George and Daphne Charlton .

Entrance to the Stanley Spencer Gallery in Cookham, Berkshire

During the Second World War he worked as a war painter. In 1945 he took part in the Bel Ami competition with his painting The Temptation of Saint Anthony . After 1945 he moved to Cliveden, where he lived and worked as a hermit. In 1950, Stanley Spencer was created by King George VI. appointed Commander of the British Empire (CBE). In the same year, after his previous resignation in 1935, he was re-elected a member of the Royal Academy of Arts in London. His later works mostly had religious themes. In 1958 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Southampton - three days later he was knighted at Buckingham Palace as a Knight Bachelor . Stanley Spencer died at the Canadian War Memorial Hospital in Cliveden from the effects of cancer and was buried in the cemetery of Cookham.

Stanley Spencer Gallery

The Spencer Gallery opened in Cookham in 1962 and is the only one in Great Britain dedicated to one artist. The permanent exhibition shows the works, personal letters to his wife Hilda, documents and memorabilia from the life of Sir Stanley Spencer.

Works

hang in the Tate Gallery:

  • The Resurrection, Cookham, 1924-27
  • Christ carries the cross
  • Saint Francis and the birds
  • Double portrait “The artist and his second wife”, 1937

The following paintings were in the collection of the London lawyer Wilfrid Evill until 2011 , which was inherited by the British marine archaeologist Honor Frost (1917-2010) after his death in 1963 :

  • Cutting the Cloth, 1929, oil on canvas
  • Workmen in the House, 1935, oil on canvas
  • Sunflower and Dog Worship, oil on canvas
  • The Village Lovers, oil on canvas
  • The Bathing Pool Dogs, 1957, oil on canvas
  • Beautitude and Worship, oil on canvas
  • Hilda with Bluebells, oil on canvas
  • Walls and Field, Halifax (A Gate, Yorkshire), oil on canvas
  • Portrait of Hilda, oil on canvas
  • Ming Tombs, Beijing, oil on canvas

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ A tangled love web that led to artistic triumphs
  2. ↑ Sir Stanley Spencer, RA in the database of the Royal Academy of Arts , English, accessed on May 24, 2013.
personal data
SURNAME Spencer, Stanley
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British painter
DATE OF BIRTH June 30, 1891
PLACE OF BIRTH Cookham , Berkshire
DATE OF DEATH December 14, 1959
Place of death Cliveden , Buckinghamshire