Sir Stanley SPENCER CBE RA (1891 – 1959, English)
The Domestic Life of Hilda & Stanley
circa 1935
color pencil
11 x 24 inches, inc. frame
Price: Sold
Sir Stanley Spencer was a master of 20th Century British art. Shortly after leaving the Slade School of Art, Spencer became well known for his paintings depicting Biblical scenes occurring as if in Cookham, the small village beside the River Thames where he was born and spent much of his life. Spencer's works often express his fervent if unconventional Christian faith. This is especially evident in the scenes that he based in Cookham which show the compassion that he felt for his fellow residents and also his romantic and sexual obsessions. Spencer's works originally provoked great shock and controversy.
Our six drawings relate to several finished pictures featuring Stanley and Hilda. They are sketches for a sequence of paintings in the Hilda Chapel of his projected, though unfortunately unrealised, Church House. Indeed, during World War One Spencer had begun to conceive a chapel of peace and love in which to display his works and these ideas developed further while working at Burghclere. Eventually he developed a complete scheme of domestic and religious spaces mixing his love of Cookham with cycles of paintings illustrating sacred and profane love.
Although the structure was never built, Spencer continually returned to the project throughout his life and continued to paint works for the building long after it had become clear it would never be constructed! One of the drawings for Church House is illustrated in the catalogue raisonne p.520. Our set is probably the one exhibited in “Stanley and Hilda Spencer” at the Anthony d'Offay Gallery in 1978 (so thinks Carolyn Leder, who wrote the catalogue entries for that show.)