Sir Stanley Spencer R.A.

Unity Spencer
Peyton Skipwith
Private Collection, U.K.

London, Anthony d'Offay, Stanley and Hilda Spencer, 27 September - 28 October 1978, cat. no.48;
London, The Fine Art Society, May 1986.

The work is on the reverse of a large page from a book entitled 'The Queen's Audience Chamber'. The printing on the reverse is not, however, visible through the page. The sheet has not been laid down but has been attached to the cream mount with adhesive tape in the upper two corners. There are artist's pinholes across the top edge of the sheet. The sheet undulates slightly across the surface. All four edges of the sheet are stained and there are small losses to the lower left corner, upper left corner, along the left of the upper edge and in the centre of the bottom edge. There is a small repair to Hilda's right knee and a few small repairs along the lower edge.The upper and lower edges of the sheet are scuffed and there is a small tear to the centre of the left edge, which has been repaired. All of this is hidden by the mount. Visible on the sheet is a small abrasion in the shape of an arc in the upper right quadrant and another small area of abrasion in the upper left quadrant along the edge of the bed sheet. There is also a 22cm. long diagonal cosmetic scratch in the lower right quadrant. There is some staining to the upper left and lower right quadrants. Held under glass in a gold painted wooden frame. Please telephone the department on 020 7293 6424 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
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Stanley Spencer commented of his meeting with Hilda Carline in 1919: 'I knew that from that day that what I had always understood in my own mind as being Stanley Spencer and who until then had been the guiding factor was now no longer so. A whole heap of stuff - lust or what you will was sweeping me along helplessly' (Keith Bell, Stanley Spencer, Phaidon, London, 1992, p.101). Spencer and Hilda married in 1925. Their first daughter, Shirin, was born the same year and their second daughter, Unity, in 1930. In December 1931, the Spencers moved to Lindworth, a large house off Cookham High Street. Spencer's growing obsession with Patricia Preece in the mid 1930s eventually led Hilda to divorce her husband in 1937. The great body of work depicting Spencer's relationship with Hilda, much of which was produced after their divorce and even after Hilda's death in 1950, is a testament to the great impact Hilda had on the artistic career, as well as the personal life, of Stanley Spencer.   

The present work relates to Spencer's Church House project, originally conceived in the early 1930s, in which the artist used Christian themes such as The Pentecost, The Baptism and The Marriage at Cana to depict scenes from his life. For The Marriage at Cana, Spencer made a series of depictions of his time with Hilda in their bedroom, occasionally including Shirin and Unity clambering over the bed, such as Going to Bed. In the present work, the couple appear in harmony with one another, their arm movements and the relaxed expressions on their faces reflecting one another. Thinking of his time in the house he lived in with Hilda before Lindworth, Spencer recalled 'the special joy and significance at Burghclere the moment just before Hilda joined me in bed' (quoted in Bell, ibid, p.443).