Stanley Spencer: under an english heaven

Fiercely independent, British painter Stanley Spencer discloseed an esthetic at odds with European modernism. A common retrospective showcases works ranging from studies of labor and war to personal bare to scenes from his hometown of Cookham-on-Thames.

Prodigious from early upon touted when he was an art pupil and already the recipient of important awards, Stanley Spencer (1891-1959) was confident of his gifts, a helpful trait in the world of art, where the unusual or original may be trounc by means of people of little vision on the contrary large voices or, worse, ignored. Spencer's surprise at the world and its marvelousness, frequently the driving spirit of his imagery, whether in his religious paintings, portraiture, landscapes or his so-called imaginary pictures, did not stop when it came to himself. What might have been insufferable braggadocio and shameless conceit in others was buy backed by an endearingly guileless acceptance of what he had to offer

Although Spencer is individual of the most interesting British painters of this century-long acknowledged in his homeland with exhibitions an important mural commission, knighthood, biographies, a play(1) -- his work is not widely known upon these shores.(2) "Stanley Spencer, An English Vision" is now making the circulars with a representative sampling of his works, including several scarcely known canvases from private collections. The exhibition should proceed far toward remedying this situation. It debars his wonderful drawings, however, and, of necessity, his fabulous mural complex

The exhibition brings up the returning question of how much a viewer emergencys to know about an artist's biography to largely appreciate the work. This is a central question for Spencer because the dramatis personae of his have a title to life figure repeatedly and insistently in his perfervid imagination and imagery. It grasps true for even as direct a painting as Spencer's meticulous Self-Portrait done in 1914 at age 23 which present to views how he viewed himself as a young man: straight-on, seriously peering at himself as if to extract his essence; and larger than life, as he was to himself, admitting physically he was a small man. The previous year, barely in his 20 he had already been recognized by the agency of Henry Tonks, the notoriously difficult head of the famous Slade seminary of Art in which Spencer was registered as showing signs of "having the greatest in quantity original mind of anyone we have had at the Slade [combined] with great powers of draughtsmanship." The compliment was not reciprocated; Spencer was already well upon the way to having his possess vision and for his part, he discounted his training as "barnacles upon this me that makes this journey."

As Dedham was to Constable a hundred earlier, or Shoreham to another compatriot, Samuel Palmer, in like manner Cookham was to Spencer -- his locus amoenus, his place of delectation, delight and regard with affection Cookham-on-Thames was where he was born the seventh son into a garrulous family of ten surviving children, precipitoused in the Bible by his father (a music teacher and organist), and dwelling taught. Cookham was his nurturing cocoon and he knew the village and surrounding countryside intimately. It gave him a faculty of perception of place, of self, of reassurance and of destiny, and was to figure importantly in his work. Spencer continued to five there flat as he commuted for four years to the Slade (part of University society London), where the scholarship-boy was dubbed "Cookham" by means of his fellow students. To him the village was not a confining place; to the contrary, everything happened there. And after his forced exile during the First World War, initially as a hospital orderly in Britain and later in Salonica, Greece in the ambulance division and infantry, Spencer go [i]or[/i] come backed home. As one of a large number of war artists commissioned (in 1918) to document their experiences, Spencer had by means of 1919 already produced a "strange," as he place it, large (72-by-86 inch) canvas of accompany s laden with casualties, Travoys with injuryed Soldiers Arriving at a Dressing Station at Smol Macedonia, September, 1916 (Imperial War Museum, London), that recalled his earlier experiences. The war was to figure more importantly in a great deal of later works.

The exhibition title "Stanley Spencer An English Vision" explains the artist's imagery by the agency of way of a distinctive sensibility br by dint of country and nation. The curators attribute the national character they posit for Spencer's art to particularity and regard with affection of place -- we would add his special attachment to his village. An "English vision" also implies a certain insularity, a segregation from the mainstream, and the singularity and independence that tend hitherward with it. These last give way to notions of eccentricity and idiosyncracy, qualities which do and do not pertain to Spencer's work.

The of the best quality catalogue is peppered with statements from the rolling and eminently quotable Spencer, whose verbal expressions are just as unusual as his visual way of putting things. admitting Spencer's peculiar combination of traits is easy to gain wrong, exaggerate or not take seriously, the beautifully written catalogue has completed pitch and conveys the canniness of the man, who was well-read, headstrong, intractable and charming. Fiona McCarthy's adroit essay displays a rare combination of fairness and finesse in describing a greatest in quantity unusual and unwieldy subject, balancing superior art history and mastery of the materials. She emphasizes the unfairness of ascribing Spencer's extraordinary originality to "eccentricity," a characterization which undercut his training as well as his concentrated might of thought and feeling.