Sir Stanley Spencer, R.A. 1891-1959

The Artist
J.Leger & Son, London, 1941, whence purchased by Robert Luscombe Hayne, by whom bequeathed to the present owner

The Resurrection, Cookham (Coll. Tate Gallery, London) was, at the time of its completion in 1926, Spencer’s largest and most important work. First exhibited at his one-man show at the Goupil Gallery in 1927, the critics were unanimous in their appraisal of a picture that was recognised as a landmark not only in his work, but was considered by some to be ‘…the most original and important picture painted in England since the war’ (The Evening Standard, 25^th February 1927).

The present study is for the group of figures to the left of the final composition, and perfectly demonstrates Spencer’s ability to bring a touching domesticity and a flavour of the everyday into a subject that must rank as one of the most important in Christianity. Of this episode, Spencer wrote:

I remember at home my mother used always to give my father’s coat a ‘brush-down’ before he left to go teaching. So by the tower, the wives brush the earth off their husbands’ coats, adjust their collars and brush their coats etc (Tate Gallery Archive, 733.3.1)

As the present study is virtually identical to the passage in the finished painting, with only minor alterations such as the transposing of colours in the women’s clothes, we must assume that it is one of the last studies before the final work.