Stanley Spencer: A Twentieth-Century British Master

Stanley Spencer (1891-1959) is one of Britain’s most significant twentieth-century painters. His extraordinary output of portraits, complex figure compositions and religious masterpieces stands comparison with the European greats of his time. Spencer was most famous (and occasionally infamous) for his celebration and immortalisation of his home village of Cookham and his fusion of the menial and the miraculous. Sex and saints, dirt and angels, the sacred and the profane: all these were melded together by his extraordinary sense of pattern and design. Although he never visited the antipodes, Spencer’s work is in every major institution throughout Australia and New Zealand. Here, the impact of his work on these collections is explored for the first time.