Early Life
Stanley Spencer was born in Cookham-On-Thames, Berkshire 30th June 1891, the 8th of nine surviving children. His father, the local church organist and piano teacher, read bible stories to the family daily. They lived in the house his grandfather built and along with the youngest children of the family, was educated at home by his older sisters. His education was artistically and intellectually stimulating, with a focus on reading, music and nature. Spencer's childhood was happy and secure.
Between 1907 and 19012 Spencer studied art at the Slade School under Henry Tonks when drawing from life and clarity of line was emphasised. A contemporary and friend at the school was Paul Nash. This wasn't a particularly happy time. He was teased for commuting daily to London from Cookham and his physical appearance caused much mirth for his contemporaries. Spencer's early work is a synthesis of French Post-Impressionism and early Italian painting typified by Giotto. Spencer was a key member of the "Neo-Primitive" group, allied with David Bomberg, William Roberts and other young artists at the Slade College of Art (Holmes, 2016) a title referencing their interest in the works of the early Italians. In fact, Spencer often referred to himself as a muralist until the 1930s, rather than a painter, linking himself to the early fresco paintings (McCarthy, 1997). His paintings are dramatic due to the foreshortening of figures and his use of light. Figures are often crowded and in contorted positions, reflecting the conditions they were in. Limbs are rounded, distorted for expressive purposes and the naivety and gaudiness are deliberate.
Spencer had an unconventional Christian faith which influenced his work. The resurrection and redemption were recurring themes, as was seeing everyday mundane tasks being a holy or spiritual events. His modern realism art works grew out of places, experiences, and social relations that enriched his imagination. Spencer was elected a full member of the Royal Academy in 1950 and was knighted in 1959 but died the same year from cancer.
Stanley Spencer was born in Cookham-On-Thames, Berkshire 30th June 1891, the 8th of nine surviving children. His father, the local church organist and piano teacher, read bible stories to the family daily. They lived in the house his grandfather built and along with the youngest children of the family, was educated at home by his older sisters. His education was artistically and intellectually stimulating, with a focus on reading, music and nature. Spencer's childhood was happy and secure.
Between 1907 and 19012 Spencer studied art at the Slade School under Henry Tonks when drawing from life and clarity of line was emphasised. A contemporary and friend at the school was Paul Nash. This wasn't a particularly happy time. He was teased for commuting daily to London from Cookham and his physical appearance caused much mirth for his contemporaries. Spencer's early work is a synthesis of French Post-Impressionism and early Italian painting typified by Giotto. Spencer was a key member of the "Neo-Primitive" group, allied with David Bomberg, William Roberts and other young artists at the Slade College of Art (Holmes, 2016) a title referencing their interest in the works of the early Italians. In fact, Spencer often referred to himself as a muralist until the 1930s, rather than a painter, linking himself to the early fresco paintings (McCarthy, 1997). His paintings are dramatic due to the foreshortening of figures and his use of light. Figures are often crowded and in contorted positions, reflecting the conditions they were in. Limbs are rounded, distorted for expressive purposes and the naivety and gaudiness are deliberate.
Spencer had an unconventional Christian faith which influenced his work. The resurrection and redemption were recurring themes, as was seeing everyday mundane tasks being a holy or spiritual events. His modern realism art works grew out of places, experiences, and social relations that enriched his imagination. Spencer was elected a full member of the Royal Academy in 1950 and was knighted in 1959 but died the same year from cancer.
World War 1
In 1919, the British War Memorials Committee commissioned Spencer to paint Travoys for the Hall of Remembrance (which was never built). The committee had wanted Spencer to paint a religious service but he insisted in showing “God in the bare real things, in a limber wagon, in ravines, in fouling mule lines”. He produced a scene of redemption, not horror, based on his own experiences. He wrote in a letter that he "felt there was grandeur... all those wounded men were calm and at peace with everything, so the pain seemed a small thing with them' (Hyman, 2001). The painting shows four wounded men being brought down from an attack on "Machine Gun Hill". It had a mountainous terrain so the medical corps used travoys - mule drawn sledges. Spencer interpreted the events in spiritual terms; the wounded passing from the darkness of battle to the light and salvation of the improvised operating theatre (an old Greek Church). The surgeons look like gowned priests working at an altar with a nearby field basin acting like a font as the mules gaze on as if in a nativity scene. The orderly closing the eye of a dead soldier has his arms outstretched like Christ on the cross. Spencer's intent was emphasised by "flattened pictorial space and the dramatic lines of the mule-drawn “travoys” that converge on the field hospital window, revealing Spencer’s admiration for early Renaissance art" (Telegraph, 2013). Roger Fry, Britain's most influential and controversial critic and art historian of this period, included Spencer's work in a Post-Impressionist exhibition with Cézanne, Modigliani and Picasso in 1919. |
Travoys Arriving with Wounded at a Dressing-Station at Smol, Macedonia (1919) Tap on picture to zoom in through an external link
He refused further war commissions as a war artist on his return to England and spent much of the years between the two wars painting biblical scenes set in Cookham.
In 1923, Spencer planned and sketched out in pen and ink a virtually complete war memorial scheme, which he first conceived in 1918. These designs, which were based on his experiences of the war, convinced Louis and Mary Behrend to commission the paintings as a memorial to Mary's brother, Lieutenant Henry Willoughby Sandham, who had died from an illness contracted in the war. |
Sandham Memorial Chapel
Sandham Memorial is like an Italian Renaissance fresco but painted in his way. It was inspired by Giotto's Area Chapel in Padua. For Spencer, the five years it took to complete the works was a means to “recover my lost self" (Mitchell, 2001). It was a kind of exorcism, freeing himself from the shadows of war. Throughout, the viewer can feel a powerful religious imagination, whereby minutely observed everyday items and daily routines are filled with symbolic meaning. Each image is based on Spencer's own experiences and places he visited. The gates in the Convoy Arriving with the Wounded, for example, are the gates of the hospital Spencer worked at as an orderly in Bristol; and the gatekeeper is based on a real person. The painting has echoes of St. Peter opening the gates to heaven. References are equally rich on the southern wall: the soldiers like angels with their floating army coats in Filling Water Bottles; the dormitory feast image of bread and jam in Tea in the Hospital Ward, where the food might be the feeding of the five thousand or a kind of Eucharist.
Sandham Memorial is like an Italian Renaissance fresco but painted in his way. It was inspired by Giotto's Area Chapel in Padua. For Spencer, the five years it took to complete the works was a means to “recover my lost self" (Mitchell, 2001). It was a kind of exorcism, freeing himself from the shadows of war. Throughout, the viewer can feel a powerful religious imagination, whereby minutely observed everyday items and daily routines are filled with symbolic meaning. Each image is based on Spencer's own experiences and places he visited. The gates in the Convoy Arriving with the Wounded, for example, are the gates of the hospital Spencer worked at as an orderly in Bristol; and the gatekeeper is based on a real person. The painting has echoes of St. Peter opening the gates to heaven. References are equally rich on the southern wall: the soldiers like angels with their floating army coats in Filling Water Bottles; the dormitory feast image of bread and jam in Tea in the Hospital Ward, where the food might be the feeding of the five thousand or a kind of Eucharist.
Top row (left to right):
Convoy arriving with the wounded; Ablutions; Kit Inspection; Dug-Out (or Stand-To)
Bottom row (left to right):
Scrubbing the floor; Sorting and Moving Kit bags; Sorting the Laundry; Filling Tea Urns
Convoy arriving with the wounded; Ablutions; Kit Inspection; Dug-Out (or Stand-To)
Bottom row (left to right):
Scrubbing the floor; Sorting and Moving Kit bags; Sorting the Laundry; Filling Tea Urns
Top row (left to right):
Reveille; Filling water Bottles; Map-reading; Firebelt
Bottom row (left to right):
Frostbite; Tea in the Hospital Ward; Bed-making; Washing Lockers
Reveille; Filling water Bottles; Map-reading; Firebelt
Bottom row (left to right):
Frostbite; Tea in the Hospital Ward; Bed-making; Washing Lockers
Perhaps the most striking and memorable image lies behind the altar of the chapel, The Resurrection. Here soldiers, some of whom were Stanley's friends, leave their graves and take their crosses up to a strangely diminished Christ. Christ sits there, not as a judge but as a compassionate receiver of the crosses. They are rising to a happy place; a place a comfort. In the centre of the painting, Stanley himself lie between two mules, a reference to his childhood when he was comforted by his parents in their bed. A powerful image is where redemption, through love, is seem by soldiers shaking hands. The painting is full of hope, rather than the despair of war, contrasting with the poets and other war artists at this time. Stanley's own wounds of war were healed in this Chapel.
"The process of art are parallel to the process of redemption. Nothing of human nature must be left out in the return to God." (Hyman, 2001)
He had the idea that God was glorified in the smallest, most menial of tasks, such as bed making or scrubbing the floor.
Being well read, a thinking and seeing man, Spencer wanted the viewer to read his murals. Tonks argued that Spencer had the most original mind of any student he had the pleasure of teaching (Spartacus, 2016) The narratives are secreted or buried beneath the surface appearances which help power the process of resurrection.
"The process of art are parallel to the process of redemption. Nothing of human nature must be left out in the return to God." (Hyman, 2001)
He had the idea that God was glorified in the smallest, most menial of tasks, such as bed making or scrubbing the floor.
Being well read, a thinking and seeing man, Spencer wanted the viewer to read his murals. Tonks argued that Spencer had the most original mind of any student he had the pleasure of teaching (Spartacus, 2016) The narratives are secreted or buried beneath the surface appearances which help power the process of resurrection.
World War 2
In 1940 the WAAC commissioned Spencer to record the war efforts with Shipbuilding on the Clyde, a project that took six years to complete. He produced a sequence of eight "altar pieces", making a frieze some 70 feet long, now housed in the Imperial War Museum, London. The work of the shipbuilding industry played a crucial role in the productive efforts of total war. The circumstances of Britain, after 1940, were of an urgent requirement for ships and transports to break through the u-boat blockades in the Atlantic and to keep Fortress Britain supplied with food, materials and arms (Rennet, 2016). Like Laura Knight's portraits, these paintings had a propaganda role, showing the efforts for the war in a positive light.
In 1940 the WAAC commissioned Spencer to record the war efforts with Shipbuilding on the Clyde, a project that took six years to complete. He produced a sequence of eight "altar pieces", making a frieze some 70 feet long, now housed in the Imperial War Museum, London. The work of the shipbuilding industry played a crucial role in the productive efforts of total war. The circumstances of Britain, after 1940, were of an urgent requirement for ships and transports to break through the u-boat blockades in the Atlantic and to keep Fortress Britain supplied with food, materials and arms (Rennet, 2016). Like Laura Knight's portraits, these paintings had a propaganda role, showing the efforts for the war in a positive light.
Shipbuilders of the Clyde shown altogether here at Chatham, Kent after restoration
All the works show a fascination with the components and machinery of the shipyards and with the workers manipulating them. He combined these elements into a vision of co-ordinated teamwork. He captured the toil, the endeavour and the skill of these people. There is no hint of conflict, the labour force exudes contentment and satisfaction. Spencer describes an egalitarian working environment (his workers are fictitiously dressed in identical Harris tweed), built around technology but driven by co-operation and co-ordination that seems to be challenging the social order. Foremen are excluded all together. This was a pattern repeated in the political changes that emerged during the war, expressed in the Labour’s landslide victory in the 1945 election, and is perhaps expressed in this work showing the artist's vision of a new society (BBC, 2016).
His overall aim was to illustrate how men and women are 'most spiritually themselves when they are working' (O'Neill, 2016). Consequently, the series of paintings has a distinctly religious tone, transforming the shipyard workers from skivvies into other-worldly figures taking part in some modern-day Passion play.
His overall aim was to illustrate how men and women are 'most spiritually themselves when they are working' (O'Neill, 2016). Consequently, the series of paintings has a distinctly religious tone, transforming the shipyard workers from skivvies into other-worldly figures taking part in some modern-day Passion play.
The first painting, Burners 1940, show the men viewed from above, isolated by geometric shapes of the steel plates they were working on. Their job was to cut along a complex chalk line which a machine could not manage. The sense of unity is created by the strong pattern of composition, despite the complexity of the plates and men. Heat and light are portrayed through the use of warm tones and a decorative element is created by the arrangement of the panels looking like petals. The right hand figure is Spencer himself, observing the scene. Spencer is not wearing protective goggles like the other workers, but is, instead, pulling his cap down to protect his eyes from getting damaged. It is significant that the first painting in the series should feature the artist dangerously observing his subjects. Getting into the thick of the shipbuilding process was essential so that (Spencer) could get to the root of the workers' daily lives (O'Neill, 2016).
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Along with Paul Nash and Dame Laura Knight, he was one of only a few official war artists in both world wars.