Work of celebrated artist to feature in exhibition

Jan 23 2008 by Phil Key, Liverpool Daily Post

SIR Stanley Spencer, one of Britain’s best loved artists, is getting an exhibition all to himself at the Tate Liverpool.

The gallery’s overview of 20th Century art – The Twentieth Century: How It Looked and How It Felt – has set one gallery aside to focus on celebrated British artists.

Until recently, Op Art artist Bridget Riley was given the space with her often eye-boggling work involving wavy lines.

The late Sir Stanley’s work is very different, a naive artist who mixed rural scenes with religious themes.

His masterpiece, The Resurrection, Cookham, painted in the 1920s, is one of the works that has gone on show, a large painting of people emerging from graves in a typically English graveyard.

He was born in Cookham, a Berkshire village on the Thames, and spent most of his life there, even earning the name Cookham from fellow students at the Slade School of Fine Art, where he studied.

The Methodist Chapel in the village, which he attended, is now the Stanley Spencer Gallery.

In World War I, he saw service with the Royal Army Medical Corps including time in Greece, an experience that was to colour much of his art.

He painted in a figurative style, his people – often villagers from Cookham – very stylised and sometimes almost cartoon-like in their imagery. Admirers of Beryl Cooke’s paintings of large women will spot his influence.

He was a war artist in World War II and one of his popular subjects was shipbuilding on the Clyde.

Although religious influences were seen in many of his paintings, many were simple rural subjects like Swan Upping at Cookham, another Spencer favourite included in an exhibition which contains a number of favourites.

His work has stood up very well, paintings that not only still entertain but display an unmistakable personal style.

Married twice, Spencer was knighted in 1959. He died of cancer the same year.

The Stanley Spencer exhibition continues until April 27, the 20th Century art show until September.