We are grateful to Carolyn Leder for her kind assistance with the cataloguing of the present work.
The Balcony depicts 6 Downshire Hill in Hampstead, near the home of the Carline family at 47 Downshire Hill, with whom the Spencer brothers socialised a great deal. Gilbert Spencer describes this period in his later writings:
'On summer evenings we had our meals on the terrace in the garden, which had a strong Continental feeling about it. Mrs Carline’s gardening was again of a highly individual kind. She sowed seeds as though she were feeding the birds. She strewed the garden with Corots, and even an occasional Cezanne would emerge. We would move about among them playing a particularly unorthodox form of croquet.'
Gilbert Spencer, Stanley Spencer by his Brother Gilbert, Victor Gollancz Ltd, London, p.164.