Portraits of Women by British Artist Stanley Spencer 1891-1959

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891 – 1959) Daphne Charlton


Although Stanley Spencer's portraits are brutally realistic & stripped of allegorical references, he wrote, "Every thing or person other than myself is a future potential part of myself, or a revealer of and an agent in revealing unknown parts of myself: unknown husbands, wives, lovers, worshippers, never before seen and only known by a persistent desire or passionate longing, supported by a kind of consciousness of their existence."  Stanley Spencer, out of Sermons by Artists (1934)

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891 – 1959) Daphne by the Window in Northern Ireland

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891 – 1959) Hilda, Unity, and Dolls  The artist's wife.

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891 – 1959) Miss Elizabeth Wimperis

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891 – 1959) Lady Slesser

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891 – 1959) Mrs Frank

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891 – 1959) Country Girl Elise

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891 – 1959) Daphne Spencer

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891 – 1959) Hilda Carline

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891 – 1959) Daphne Charlton

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891 – 1959) Hilda Carline

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891 – 1959) Miss Ashwanden

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891 – 1959) Patricia Preece, 1933

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891 – 1959) Mrs C P Grant

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891 – 1959) Mrs Marjorie Metz

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891 – 1959) Rachel Westropp

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891 – 1959) Mrs Linda Few Brown

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891 – 1959) The Sisters

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891 – 1959) Portrait in a Garden

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891 – 1959) The Psychiatrist

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891 – 1959) Anny Lewinter Frankl

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891 – 1959) Portrait of a Young Woman

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891-1959) Mr and Mrs Baggett 1956

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891-1959)  Patricia at Cockmarsh Hill 1935

Beatitudes of Love from the 1930s from Stanley Spencer 1891-1959

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891 – 1959) Contemplation 1938


In his Beatitudes series, Spencer brings together countless aspects of life, including love, sexuality, religion, reality, and fantasy.  Of these paintings, Spencer wrote, "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."  Spencer explained in the 1930s, "There are two joys, the joys of innocence and religiousness and the joys of change and sexual experience and while these two selves seem unrelated and irreconcilable, still I am convinced of their ultimate union."

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891 – 1959) Consciousness

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891 – 1959) Passion or Desire

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891 – 1959) Romantic Meeting

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891 – 1959) Worship

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891 – 1959) Knowing

Our Swans & Stanley Spencer 1891-1959

Stanley Spencer (English artist, 1891-1959) Swan Upping at Cookham c 1915-19


Nearly daily for the past 10 years, we have driven by a farm pond which was home to a pair of beautiful white swans & their offspring.  Last summer, the swans disappeared, and the farm house, barn, & all outbuildings were razed.  Now no swans, no offspring this year as we drive by.  Heartbreaking.  Here are a few of Spencer's more spiritual swans...

Stanley Spencer (English artist, 1891-1959) Separating Fighting Swans c 1933

Hero worship by Stanley Spencer 1891-1959

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891 – 1959) Adoration of Old Men


There are still a few truly amazing heros to be found...

Woman Getting Ready to Meet the Day by Ramon Casas i Carbo (Spanish painter, 1866-1932)

It is rainy and dark. These kinds of days are slow getting started. This feeling is elegantly captured by 19th-century Spanish painter Ramon Casas i Carbo in this series.

Ramon Casas i Carbo (Spanish painter, 1866-1932)

Ramon Casas i Carbo (Spanish painter, 1866-1932)

Ramon Casas i Carbo (Spanish painter, 1866-1932)

Ramon Casas i Carbo (Spanish painter, 1866-1932)

Ramon Casas i Carbo (Spanish painter, 1866-1932)

Ramon Casas i Carbo (Spanish painter, 1866-1932)

Ramon Casas i Carbo (Spanish painter, 1866-1932) Interior

Ramon Casas i Carbo (Spanish painter, 1866-1932)

These simple, elegant paintings are not typical of the work of Ramon Casas i Carbó (1866-1932). He was a Catalan artist. During a turbulent time in his native Barcelona, he was a leading portraitist, painting the intellectual, economic, & political elite of Barcelona, Paris, Madrid, & beyond. He was also known for painting less elitist crowd scenes ranging from the audience at a bullfight to an assembly for an execution to a group of rioters in the Barcelona streets. Also a graphic designer, his posters & postcards helped to define the Catalan art movement known as modernisme. By the 1920s, Casas had fallen far away from the avant-gardiste tendencies of his youth. His work from this later period looks like it came from an academic painter of an earlier time than his work of the 1890s.

Ramon Casas i Carbo (1866-1932) Self-Portrait

The Radiant Portraits of Peder Severin Krøyer (Norwegian-born Danish artist, 1851-1909)

Peder Severin Krøyer (Norwegian-born Danish artist, 1851-1909) Marie Kroyer The Artist's Wife 1891


Peder Severin Krøyer (1851-1909), known as P.S. Krøyer, was a Norwegian-Danish painter. He is one of the best known of the Skagen Painters, a community of Danish & Nordic artists who worked in Skagen, Denmark, especially during the late 1800s. On a trip to Paris in 1888, he ran into Marie Martha Mathilde Triepcke, whom he had known in Copenhagen. They married in 1889, at her parents' home in Germany. Marie Krøyer, also a painter, became associated with the Skagen community, & was often featured in Krøyer's paintings. The couple had 1 child, a daughter named Vibeke, born in January, 1895, but divorced in 1905.


Peder Severin Krøyer (Norwegian-born Danish artist, 1851-1909) Marie Kroyer 1889


Peder Severin Krøyer (Norwegian-born Danish artist, 1851-1909) Artist's Wife Marie


Peder Severin Krøyer (Norwegian-born Danish artist, 1851-1909) Marie, Ravello 1890


Peder Severin Krøyer (Norwegian-born Danish artist, 1851-1909) Nina


Peder Severin Krøyer (Norwegian-born Danish artist, 1851-1909) Artist's Wife Marie


Peder Severin Krøyer (Norwegian-born Danish artist, 1851-1909) Artist and Wife Marie


Peder Severin Krøyer (Norwegian-born Danish artist, 1851-1909) Portrait of the Artist's Wife Marie

Peder Severin Krøyer (Norwegian-born Danish artist, 1851-1909) The Artist's Wife 1892


Peder Severin Krøyer (Norwegian-born Danish artist, 1851-1909) Artist Anna Ancher 1886


Peder Severin Krøyer (Norwegian-born Danish artist, 1851-1909) with his wife Marie

Swiss artist Jean-Etienne Liotard 1702-1789 either adored chocolate or the chocolate serving girl

Jean-Etienne Liotard (Swiss-French artist, 1702-1789)  The Chocolate Girl 1743


Food historian Patricia Bixler Reber tells us in her blog Researching Food History - Cooking and Dining, that chocolate is made from the seeds of the cacao tree.  Seed pods were picked, opened, & fermented for a few days, as they dried.  In the 18th-century, the beans were roasted in a pan, pot, or roaster on the hearth.  The shells were removed leaving the usable chocolate "nibs."  The nibs were ground down into a paste by using a stone or steel metate & mano or in a choclate mill.   Further grinding, conching, resulted in a smooth texture.

Jean-Etienne Liotard (Swiss artist, 1702-1789)  Madame Liotard and her Daughter


Marylander Pat Reber shared 2 primary sources from the 1700s explaining chocolate preparation.  "The Cacao...a Seed...when they have been divested of their Shells by Fire, and are afterwards peeled, and roasted in a Bason, before a moderate Fire, they are pounded in a very hot Mortar. The Americans bruise them with an Iron Cylinder, on a flat Stone made very hot; they are then formed into a Paste, which is afterwards boiled with Sugar; and this is called plain Chocolate. But if it is to be enriched with a fine Odour, four Pounds of this Paste, and three of powdered Sugar, are worked together in a Mortar, or on some Stone..."  (Spectacle de la Nature. Noël Antoine Pluche. 1766)

Jean-Etienne Liotard (Swiss artist, 1702-1789)  Le Petit Déjeuner


"The Cacao seeds are roasted like coffee...When the kernels are perfectly purified, they are pounded in a mortar of heated iron over burning charcoal, and thus reduced to a coarse paste, which is set to cool on a marble slab. A second rolling is bestowed with a steel cylinder on a smooth freestone, and as soon as the paste becomes sufficiently smooth, it is mixed with sugar in a hot basin and poured into tin moulds..."  (The Encyclopædia of Geography, Hugh Murray. Phila: 1837)

Jean-Etienne Liotard (Swiss-French artist, 1702-1789) La Chocolatiere c 1744

Jean-Etienne Liotard (Swiss-French artist, 1702-1789) La Chocolatiere