Sir Stanley Spencer, R.A.

Commissioned by Mrs Corble from the Artist
Gwen Raverat, and thence by descent to the present owners

London, Royal Academy, Stanley Spencer RA, 20th September - 14th December 1980, cat. no.8.

Keith Bell, A Complete Catalogue of Paintings, London, Phaidon, 1992, cat. no.158, p.431.

Oil on original canvas. There is a small restored tear just beneath the angel's neck and some small paint losses and lines of paint cracking in the cuffs of the angel's robes. With the exception of the above the work appears to be in good and stable condition. Ultraviolet light reveals an area of florescence that corresponds with the restored tear and further small flecks scattered throughout the sky and the foliage. The work is presented in a painted and gilt frame. Please contact the department on +44 (0) 207 293 6424 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

We are grateful to Carolyn Leder for her kind assistance with the cataloguing of the present work.

In a corner of Cookham churchyard sits a low, unassuming square gravestone marking the resting place for Stanley Spencer. It is a fitting tribute for an artist born and brought up in the village, who spent most of his life in the small parish nestled within the leafy Berkshire hills, and who drew from it inspiration for some of his most celebrated paintings. Put quite simply Cookham was the embodiment of life, love and religion to Spencer, and served, together with his first and second wives, as a continued and lasting muse. It was with his painting of The Resurrection, Cookham, shown at his first solo exhibition at the Goupil Gallery in 1927, that the young artist secured his position as a leading light in Britain between the wars. The painting, now hanging in the Tate, London, and executed a decade before the present work, displays the artist’s idea of resurrection happening in a most familiar location of the churchyard of the Holy Trinity Church. It is a fitting location for such an event, and shows the love and trust that he bestowed upon the small eleventh century stone structure that stood at the heart of village life.

By the time of his return to Cookham in late 1931, after a brief period of working away with his wife and young family at the Sandham Memorial Chapel in Burghclere, Hampshire, Spencer was a widely respected artist. Together with the success of the Burghclere commission he had shown ten works in the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale of 1932 and been elected a member of the prestigious Royal Academy of Arts in London. Such an election made him eligible for the inclusion of a number of works in the annual Summer Exhibition, and it was in the summer show of 1934 that the first version of the present work was exhibited, purchased from the show by J. Spendan Lewis for £100. Soon after completing the work Spencer produced a near identical composition at the commission of Mrs Mary Corble, an important patron of Spencer’s during this period. It was later acquired by Gwen Raverat, Spencer’s former fellow student at the Slade. Raverat was a great friend and early supporter of Spencer's work, and put him forward to design a mural for the newly built Reading Room of the University Library at Cambridge. Writing to Sir William Rothenstein, to advocate for Spencer's appointment to the scheme, that he was ‘by far the greatest painter now alive in England’ (Raverat quoted in Frances Spalding, Gwen Raverat: Friends, Family and Affections, Pimlico, London, 2004, p.358).

The Angel, Cookham Churchyard marked the only known occasion within Spencer's life where he created two near identical compositions, a testament not only to the importance of Corble as a patron, but also of his fondness for the subject matter. The present work takes an identical perspective from the angel that adorns the entrance to the churchyard and on to the steeple beyond. Somewhat of a local landmark within the village, the angel was also to appear as a cameo in the top right of Parents Resurrecting (The National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne), executed in the same year as the present work, and the first painting made specifically for his never-to-be-realised Church House project.

This period marked a turning point in Spencer’s life and artistic oeuvre, with his return home to the place that had, and would continue to mean so much to him. Whilst more ‘documentary’ in terms of composition than village scenes such as Love on the Moore (1937-55, The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge) or Unveiling Cookham War Memorial (1922, Private Collection), the present work displays a more serene form of remembrance and religious devotion. It brings together his skills as both an adept landscape painter and a portraitist in celebration of the village that had fostered his earliest religious and artistic beliefs. As he himself identified ‘When I lived in Cookham I was disturbed by a feeling of everything being meaningless. But quite suddenly I became aware that everything was full of special meaning and this made everything holy’ (the Artist, quoted in Adrian Glew, Stanley Spencer, Letters and Writings, Tate Publishing, London, 2001, p.164). Cookham was, to borrow from the title of his 1937 painting now hanging in Manchester Art Gallery, his Village in Heaven; a place in which to celebrate life, love and religion.