The Kunsthal Rotterdam Shows a Sir Stanley Spencer Major Retrospective

Written by Louis Wellerman Monday, 02 April 2012 22:30

Rotterdam, Netherlands.- The Kunsthal Roitterdam is proud to present "Sir Stanley Spencer: Between Heaven and Earth" on view at the museum through January 15th. "Between heaven and Earth" is the first major retrospective of Sir Stanley Spencer (1891-1959) to be held in contintal europe androfiles one of the most important British painters of the twentieth century. His work is characterized by a wealth of topics such as Bible stories, landscapes, portraits and domestic scenes. Through his figurative, narrative painting and its subject matter Spencer has made a significant contribution to the development of modern art. The exhibition includes more than eighty paintings and drawings in a broad art-historical context by the addition of some twenty works by English contemporaries including Lucian Freud and Dora Carrington. Spencer's artistic influence in the Netherlands is shown through several works of his admirers Dick Ket and Charley Toorop.

Generous loaned for the exhibition is a generous selection of Stanley Spencer's finest works made from museum collections and private collections including Andrew Lloyd Webber. Tate Britain and the Stanley Spencer Gallery in Cookham set very generously of their biggest and most important works available. The exhibition is the result of new research by guest curator Dr. Alied Ottevanger.

Spencer was born and spent much of his life in Cookham in Berkshire. From 1908 to 1912, Spencer studied at the Slade School of Art at University College, London under Henry Tonks and others. His contemporaries at the Slade included Dora Carrington, Mark Gertler, Paul Nash, Edward Wadsworth, Isaac Rosenberg and David Bomberg. After a long period of agonising whether or not to join up, in 1915 Spencer volunteered with the Royal Army Medical Corps and worked as an orderly at the Beaufort War Hospital. In 1916, the 24-year-old Spencer volunteered for service with the RAMC in Macedonia, and served with the 68th Field Ambulance unit. He subsequently volunteered to be transferred to the Berkshire Regiment. His survival of the devastation and torment that killed so many of his fellows indelibly marked Spencer's attitude to life and death. Such preoccupations come through time and again in his religious works. Towards the end of the war he was commissioned by the War Artists Advisory Committee to paint what became "Travoys Arriving with Wounded at a Dressing Station at Smol, Macedonia, September 1916" (now in the Imperial War Museum).


A further major commission was to paint murals for the Sandham Memorial Chapel in Burghclere dedicated to the war dead. The altarpiece depicts the Resurrection of the Soldiers. In 1939, he went on a painting holiday at the suggestion of one of his friends, William Rothenstein, to Leonard Stanley in Gloucestershire. This holiday extended to two years, Stanley stayed at the White Hart Inn and created many of his important works in his room above the bar which he used as a studio including 'Us in Gloucestershire' and 'The Wool Shop'. Spencer's work as a war artist in the Second World War included his epic depiction of shipbuilding workers and their families at Port Glasgow on the Clyde. When the war ended he again took up, as did certain other British neo-romantic artists of the time, his visionary preoccupations—in Spencer's case with a sometimes apocalyptic tinge.

In 1925, Spencer married Hilda Carline, then a student at the Slade and sister of the artist Richard Carline. A daughter, Shirin, was born in November of that year and a second daughter, Unity, in 1930. Spencer met the artist Patricia Preece in 1929 in Cookham. He became infatuated with her. Carline divorced Spencer in 1937. A week later he married Preece, who persuaded him to sign over his house to her; she, however, was a lesbian. She continued to live with her partner, Dorothy Hepworth, and though she frequently posed nude for her husband, she refused to consummate the marriage. When Spencer’s bizarre relationship with Preece finally fell apart (though she would never grant a divorce), he would visit Hilda, an arrangement that continued throughout the latter's subsequent mental breakdown. Hilda died from cancer in November 1950.


Spencer was knighted in 1959. He died of cancer at nearby Cliveden later that year. Spencer has been described as an early modernist painter. His works often express his fervent if unconventional Christian faith. This is especially evident in the scenes that he envisioned and depicted in Cookham. Very evident in these too is the compassion that he felt for his fellow residents. His quirky romantic and sexual obsessions were also expressed within this home environment, but it is a mistake to regard him merely as some sort of quaint village innocent, inextricably tied to small-town England. His works originally provoked great shock and controversy. Nowadays, they still seem stylistically avant-garde, whilst the nudes that arose through the futile relationship with Patricia Preece, such as the Leg of mutton nude, foreshadow some of the much later works of Lucian Freud, who has expressed admiration for Spencer. Spencer's early work is regarded as a synthesis of French Post-Impressionism, exemplified for instance by Paul Gauguin, plus early Italian painting typified by Giotto. This was a conscious choice, and Spencer was a key member of a group who called themselves the "Neo-Primitives." Allied with him were David Bomberg, William Roberts and other young contemporaries at the Slade.

The Kunsthal is a museum in Rotterdam, which opened its doors in 1992. The museum is situated in the Museumpark of Rotterdam next to the Natuurhistorisch Museum Rotterdam, and in the vicinity of the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. The Kunsthal has no permanent collection, but organises a wide range of temporary exhibits. The large space available 3,300 m2 (36,000 sq ft) allows various exhibits in parallel. The Kunsthal stages some 25 exhibitions a year, presenting culture in the widest sense of the word: old art, new art, design, photography - from elitist to popular. The Kunsthal frequently experiments with themes which in many cases provide the first impulse for an exhibition. This approach has resulted in an exciting and varied exhibition repertoire highlighting Impressionism, lingerie, Leonardo da Vinci, Blackfoot Indians, Jewels of the Orient, Pop-art. More than 3300 square metres of exhibition space are available in the striking building designed by Rotterdam architect Rem Koolhaas - a work of art in its own right, making a visit to the Kunsthal well worth your while. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.kunsthal.nl

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