It's About Time

Friday, May 2, 2014

Englishmen Working by Stanley Spencer 1891-1959

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891 – 1959) Workmen in the House 1935

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891 – 1959) Workmen in the House 1935

Stanley Spencer painted men working for decades. He was an Official War Artist in both World Wars. His great cycle of wall paintings in the National Trust Sandham Memorial Chapel, Burghclere commemorate his experiences in the RAMC and infantry during the First World War.

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891 – 1959) Shipbuilding on the Clyde

The Imperial War Museum in London loaned paintings to augment an exhibition of Stanley Spencer's series on WWII British shipbuilding in 2012. An introduction to the exhibition written by Stanley Spencer Gallery's Curator, Carolyn Leder, explains...

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891 – 1959) Garage 1929

In 1939, Spencer urged his dealer Dudley Tooth to find him 'a war job, some sort of official art employment.' The art market was slack and as Tooth noted Spencer was 'terribly in debt all round'. On Tooth's writing to Sir Kenneth Clark, Director of the National Gallery, and Chairman of the War Artists' Advisory Committee (WAAC) under the Ministry of Information, Spencer was interviewed and appointed. His initial suggestion of a Crucifixion with predella panels to show the Nazi conquest of Poland was rejected.

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891 – 1959)

Instead, he agreed to depict a shipyard, paying his first visit to the suggested 'Kingston' yard, owned by Sir James Lithgow, at Port Glasgow on the river Clyde in May 1940. He responded to the place with enthusiasm...The strong sense of community reminded him of Cookham: 'many of the places in and corners of Lithgow's factory moved me in much the same way as I was by rooms in my childhood.'

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891 – 1959)

During WWII, Spencer depicted all the major trades involved in the building of the ships, including developments in technology, such as the use of welding, which gradually superseded riveting as a method of joining steel plates...They fully engaged his creative imagination: 'The point is that whatever may be thought of these shipbuilding pictures of mine, I am much moved by what I see up here and experience joy in attempting to express the feeling I have about it all…'

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

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

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

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891 – 1959) Filling Tea Urns

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891 – 1959) Shipbuilding on the Clyde Burners

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891 – 1959) Shipbuilding on the Clyde Riveters 1946

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891 – 1959) Shipbuilding on the Clyde Riveters

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891 – 1959) Shipbuilding on the Clyde Welders

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891-1959) Mending Cowls, Cookham 1915

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891-1959) Bedmaking 1927-32

Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Shopping in 1900s England by Stanley Spencer 1891-1959

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891 – 1959) Choosing a Dress

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891 – 1959) Crossing the Road

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891 – 1959) The Sausage Shop

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891 – 1959) The Wool Shop 1939

Sunday, April 20, 2014

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

Friday, April 18, 2014

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)