SKU: 11367
Gilbert Spencer
(1892 - 1979)
The Farmer with his herd
£3,500
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Gilbert Spencer (1892 - 1979)
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A unique study collection of drawings and ephemera by Gilbert Spencer from the family estate. There are 42 drawings contained within the collection which span the breadth of Spencer’s professional career. The earliest work dates from 1915, and the latest, c. 1964.
The collection includes rare and important studies from life and the antique, produced during Spencer’s time at the Slade School of Fine Art. There is a sensitive portrait of his wife, Ursula, completed shortly after their marriage in 1930. There are preparatory sketches, and a study of a Nursing Sister for New Arrivals – Spencer’s landmark wartime painting, made while serving in Sinai, and now part of the Imperial War Museum collection. There are also studies for the Grasmere Home Guard, where Spencer was stationed during the Second World War. The group also contains
tracings and cut-outs used for the Progress of Husbandry, now in the collection of the Tate Gallery.
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.
