Sir Stanley Spencer (1891-1959) was a
British painter.
Spencer studied at
the Slade in London, but he spent most of his life in the village of his birth,
Cookham in Berkshire. Deeply religious and obsessed by resurrection, Spencer viewed Cookham as a "
village in heaven" where everything was invested with mystical significance. Inspired by his idol
Giotto, he took scenes from the Bible and restaged them in this tiny village by the Thames.
Christ carries the cross through
Spencer's front garden.
Jesus heals in the attic of his house.
Stanley and his brother watch from behind the shed as Christ is betrayed at the bottom of the garden.
He is crucified on telegraph poles in the high street. In the
village churchyard, the
dead are rising.
Spencer served in Macedonia during the First World War and, deeply affected by the experience, spent 9 years from 1923 onwards decorating the specially commissioned
Sandham Memorial Chapel (inspired by Giotto's
Scrovegni Chapel) with
intricate murals documenting his experiences [
photo gallery] [
video tour.] He was
officially commissioned as a war artist in the Second World War, and spent 7 years
documenting the work at Lithgow's shipyard in Glasgow in a series of monumental canvasses.
An
exquisite draughtsman who was equally at home painting
everyday subjects, for too long his
eccentricities overshadowed his art. The reputation of this "
divine fool of British art," who turned up for his
knighthood with a carrier bag, sketched on
toilet paper, and
pushed his easel around Cookham in a pram, has in recent decades been
radically reappraised. The frank and intimate approach seen in his domestic works, often exposing his
turbulent personal life, influenced a generation of artists. His
astonishing nudes of the
1930's (nsfw - he was almost
prosecuted for obscenity over these in the 1950's) provided the template for the work of
Lucian Freud. He created an
invaluable record of two World Wars.
"Half a century ago, Spencer seemed old-fashioned; today, art has caught up with him. It no longer seems outlandish to call him the most important British painter of the last century."
251 of his works.
Critical writings on Spencer by Kenneth Pople.
Peter Ackroyd on Spencer and the Thames (video.)
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posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 8:17 AM on October 30