There, they were influenced by the lesbian art world of Nat… In this sense, he could be seen as part of the retreat back to nature to try and find some meaning to life. He sought salvation through the redemptive power of God and Christ, but his efforts to portray a heavenly nirvana also encouraged him to throw a revealing light on vital aspects of life and the human condition. This general mood towards realism no doubt contributed to the rejection of Spencer’s 1934 painting The Dustman (or the Lovers) by the Royal Academy because of its “distortions and peculiarity”—brought about by Spencer’s attempts to show a dustman “transported to heaven while in the execution of his duty”. It provides the crucial setting for many of his landscapes and figurative paintings such as Christ carrying the Cross down Cookham High Street. He spent most of his life in the place of his birth—the “holy suburb of Heaven”—the village of Cookham, to the west of London. Self-portrait with Patricia Preece This double nude portrait shows Spencer apparently on his knees in front of his lover Patricia Preece, who is lying down in bed.

Ferment in artistic circles took the form of a fight against tradition, philistinism and sentimental romanticism.

The figures, as one critic said, look like “clumsily modelled marionettes” and have the flat, other worldliness of many Post-Impressionist paintings of the time. Spencer’s world was one permeated with the “Holy Spirit”. Soldiers are emerging from their graves in a Resurrection scene. explains more about how we use your data, and your rights.


He continues, “the picture is supposed to be a reflection of the general attitude and behaviour of men during the war”, when a soldier would fondly remember the “caress of a sweetheart” or “sitting in his doorway chatting to his neighbours”. Later Spencer was sent to fight in a working class infantry battalion in the Balkans where he contracted malaria and was almost shot. When his world went into crisis as in the First World War—he complained that “my ideas were beginning to unfold in fine order when along comes the war and smashes everything”—he tried to restore his vision through his art. Spencer, who died in 1959 aged 68, is one of Britain's most important 20th century artists, who would wear pyjamas under his suit and push his canvas and easels around in a pram. According to the sculptor Anthony Gormley, Spencer is a hero for the post-modern generation. Spencer and Preece's relationship was immensely strained: their marriage was never consummated and instead Preece brought her lover, Dorothy Hepworth, to live with them, and Spencer was consumed by his sexual obsession with Preece. According to his contemporary, artist William Coldstream (1908- ), “The 1930 slump affected us all very considerably... One painter I knew lost all his money and had to become a traveller in vacuum cleaners. They sensed their art was similarly inhuman. A leg of mutton lies on a table in front of them. “But what is a mystery to me is, if I can enter into these men’s little interest and hopes why can’t they enter into mine?” His answer, dressed up in his usual religious language, was firmly down to earth.

Featuring 250,000 artworks by over 45,000 artists. The other walls depict the everyday life that Spencer himself experienced. In 1959 it seems he knew he was dying from cancer and in five days painted another self-portrait.

Preece and Hepworth continued to live together after the wedding, and after Preece gained control of Spencer's finances they evicted him from his house in 1938 to rent it out. The exhibition can also be seen in Toronto and Belfast. He writes often in his diaries that he catered to a general mood in the art buying public to produce “potboilers” that enabled him to survive.
They portray what Sir Stanley described as 'a sort of religious fervour' for his second wife, Sign up to our newsletter for daily updates and breaking news.

Discover artworks, explore venues and meet artists. Everyone began to be interested in economics and then in politics. Stanley Spencer was born in 1891, the son of a professional musician. Shortly before he was called up for military service he painted a beautiful Self-Portrait (1914), the light effects being reminiscent of Caravaggio. His favourite brother Sydney was killed. However, Spencer was at least conscious of making a retreat and felt that it had been forced on him for the most practical of reasons. Every man has the same Name.”. From 1923-32 Spencer painted panels for the high-ceilinged rectangular Sandham War Memorial Chapel. “Spencer stands for the absolute subjectivity of the artist. In Zacharias and Elizabeth (1913-14) Spencer paints the angel Gabriel telling Elizabeth that she will give birth to John the Baptist. Preece became both saviour and tormentor to Spencer, subject of his most astonishing figurative and portrait works including 'Double Nude Portrait: The Artist and his Second Wife (Leg of Mutton)', 1937; Tate Collection, 'Self-Portrait with Patricia Preece', 1937; Fitzwilliam Museum, and 'Nude (Portrait of Patricia Preece)', 1935; City of Kingston-upon-Hull. With titles such as Desire for Passion, Knowing, Contemplation they portray various couples—frequently large women engulfing small men or vice versa.

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