SKU: 11367
Gilbert Spencer
(1892 - 1979)
The Farmer with his herd
£2,850
Sold
Gilbert Spencer (1892 - 1979)
Size:
Height – 75cm
Width – 62cm
Unusually for Spencer, the sitter in this portrait was a professional model. A pencil study of the sitter’s head is in a private collection. In the Gilbert Spencer archive (Arts University Bournemouth), there is a photograph of a pencil sketch of the roof and Glasgow skyline used in the background, dated 1949. This can be securely dated to 1949 by its exhibition history and the existence of a preparatory sketch dated 1949. The preparatory portrait study is from a photograph in the Witt library, its present location is unknown.
We are grateful to Paul Gough and Amy Lim for providing 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.
