The countryside comes alive with Stanley Spencer 1891-1959

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891 – 1959) Cottages at Burghclere

Stanley Spencer allows reality to dominate in his silent landscapes & intimate portraits.  My landscapes, he once wrote, are places waiting for their figures.  "My landscapes compared with my other work are carried out with a hard relentless persistence and dogged determination to go through with it, which gives them a competent and finished but lifeless and hard look," he complained. Once Spencer injects figures into his landscapes, they become stories & reality gets distorted.  "Distortion arrives from the effort to see something in a way that will enable [the painter] to love it."  Stanley Spencer, out of Sermons by Artists (1934)

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891 – 1959) Cookham Farm Gate 1950

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891-1959) Old Tannery Mills, Gloucestershire 1939

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

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891 – 1959) Rock Gardens, Cookham Dene

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

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891-1959) Buttercups in a Meadow

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891 – 1959) Apple Gatherers 1912-13

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891 – 1959) Landscape in North Wales

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

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

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891 – 1959) Saint Francis and the Birds

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891-1959) Scarecrow, Cookham 1934

 Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891-1959) Sunflower and Dog Worship 1937

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

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