SKU: 11367
Gilbert Spencer
(1892 - 1979)
The Farmer with his herd
£2,850
Gilbert Spencer (1892 - 1979)
£29,000
Size:
Height – 65cm
Width – 45cm
1 in stock
This is one of two portraits of Spencer’s friend, ballet dancer Joyce Peters, in whom he had a romantic interest: a finished portrait, and a study. He wrote to their mutual friend Dick Carline, “I didn’t care if I painted her lips veridian or vermilion it was all the same to me, great bliss” (Gough 2024, p. 148). Both were exhibited at the Goupil Gallery in 1929, titled no. 1 and no. 2; they are easily confused, but this is probably no. 1, the finished portrait.
Peters was associated with the Bloomsbury Group and performed in London and New York, dancing with the renowned Rambert company. A lifelong friend of Gilbert Spencer, she helped him secure a number of portrait commissions. Spencer was also a witness at her marriage to Commander A. J. G. Langley.
This portrait was later exhibited in the British Pavilion at the 1930 Venice Biennale, following efforts by Sir Ronald Graham, the British Ambassador to Italy, who argued that Britain’s absence would signal a “sign of national indifference to art”. Among the organising committee were P.G. Konody—who had campaigned tirelessly through the 1920s—Lady Cunard, Sir Joseph Duveen, and others.
That year, ninety-seven British artists were represented at the Pavilion, including both Gilbert and his older brother Stanley Spencer, along with figures such as Henry Moore, David Bomberg, Ethel Walker, and Gerald Leslie Brockhurst.
We are grateful to Glyn Hopkins and Geoff Peters for their assistance and also to Paul Gough and Amy Lim for providing some of this information through their online catalogue.
Painter, especially of landscapes, draughtsman, teacher and writer, and brother of the painter Stanley Spencer. Born at Cookham, Berkshire. Spencer studied at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts, woodcarving at the Royal College of Art, 1911-12, then with Fred Brown and Henry Tonks at the Slade School of Fine Art, 1913-20. Between 1915 and 1919 he served in the army. Spencer had his first one-man show at the Goupil Gallery in 1923; he also exhibited at the RA (he was elected RA in 1960), NEAC, (of which he was a member), Leicester Galleries, RSA, Redfern Gallery and many other venues. Although he produced notable wall paintings for Holywell Manor, Oxford, 1934-6, Spencer made his name as a landscape artist working mainly in the English southern counties. At various times he taught at the Royal College of Art, Glasgow School of Art and Camberwell, serving meanwhile as an Official War Artist, 1940-3. His book Stanley Spencer appeared in 1961 and his autobiography, Memoirs of a Painter, in 1974. A retrospective exhibition was held at Reading in 1964. The Tate and many other public collections hold his work. He sometimes just signed his work GS. He lived in Hampstead and towards the end of his life near Reading, Berkshire.
