Sir Stanley Spencer, R.A.

Commissioned from the artist, through Arthur Tooth and Son, by F.J. Lyons in 1957
Christie's, London, 19 October 1979, lot 149
Anthony d'Offay, London, 1979
Sotheby's, London, 11 May 1988, lot 119
Browse and Darby, London
Private Collection

London, Merradin Gallery, Stanley Spencer, 1972, exhibition catalogue;
London, Browse and Darby, British and French Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, June-July 1989, no.32, illustrated front cover;
London, Barbican Art Gallery, Glasgow, Kelvingrove Gallery, Newcastle, Laing Art Gallery, Stanley Spencer: The Apotheosis of Love, January-September 1991, no.71, illustrated;
Cookham-on-Thames, Stanley Spencer Gallery, Children's Paintings and Drawings by Stanley Spencer, RA, 30th Anniversary Exhibition, May-August 1992, no.1, illustrated.

Duncan Robinson, Stanley Spencer, Oxford, 1990, p.105, illustrated p.103, pl.84;
Keith Bell, Stanley Spencer: A Complete Catalogue of the Oil Paintings, London, 1992, no.434, p.514, illustrated, p.230. 

The canvas has been relined. The paint surface is in good condition. Examination under ultra-violet light reveals four small spots of retouching in the upper left quadrant. Held in a gilded wooden and composition frame with a decorative border.
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Painted in 1957, At the Piano was intended by Spencer to be the centrepiece of a memorial to his lover, Daphne Charlton, which would form part of the 'Chapel of Me' project. The 'Chapel of Me' was devoted to the central female figures in Spencer's life: his wives, his lovers and even the family maid, and although the project never materialised, the present work remains as a testament to Spencer's vivid imagination and memory, and the way he reflected on his relationship with Daphne in the context of his relationships with other women. 

Spencer met Daphne Charlton, and her husband George, a teacher at the Slade, at a party in London in 1939. Spencer moved with the couple to Leonard Stanley, Gloucestershire on a painting trip in July of that year. A relationship began to develop between Spencer and Daphne following George's early departure to assist with the relocation of the Slade to Oxford. A painter herself, Daphne proved a great encouragement to Spencer, whose second marriage had recently deteriorated, both personally and in his painting. 

At the Piano presents a phantasmagoria of some of Spencer's most personal memories. The sense of reflection inherent in the painting is made more powerful by the knowledge that the original drawing for the work (At the Piano, Vol.I, p.3, C. Leder, Stanley Spencer: The Astor Collection, London, 1976, pp.42, illustrated p.40.) was completed by Spencer sixteen years prior to the painting, at the height of his relationship with Daphne. In the painting, Daphne is presented as the visual focus of the work, binding wool on a chaise longue. Although Daphne's work requires attention, her gaze is firmly fixed on Spencer, who appears as a half figure on the right of the painting. The unbreakable gaze between the lovers suspends them in a time frame separate to the rest of the scene. Although they are physically distanced, the erotic desire in their expressions, and the attention Spencer has drawn to the erotic parts of their bodies, conveys the unrestrainable physical relationship between the lovers.

The image of Spencer and Daphne's locked eyes had appeared a year before the original drawing for At the Piano. Painted in 1940, On the Tiger Rug (fig.2) depicts the same desperately amorous expressions on the lovers' faces. In this portrayal, the couple are physically close enough to wrap their arms around one another, but the same sense of constrained desire, waiting to burst forth, is achieved by the tiger's head which nestles between the lovers to keep them apart. Spencer's depictions of himself with Daphne emphasise the physical relationship between the couple and the bewitching power she holds over him.  

All attention is not wholly focused on the lovers in the present painting, however. The title itself draws the viewer's attention to the background where Spencer's father William sits at the piano. William is depicted as a God-like figure. He is the only other man in the painting and surrounded by a group of women, three of whom are faceless. These unidentifiable dreamlike figures make a cohesive compositional group, but their refusal to make eye contact with one another marks the background of the painting as a place of mixed memories, the flat picture plane tipping the figures forward so that memories merge and become impossible to distinguish from one another. The scene recalls Spencer's memories of his father playing the piano during childhood Christmases in the drawing-room at Fernlea, but the piano also holds significance in Spencer's relationship with Daphne; the couple had a piano in the room they shared at The White Hart Inn at the height of their love affair. The ball of wool which Daphne holds recalls her trip with Spencer to Stonehouse to buy wool, but also his habit in later life of describing the act of painting as 'knitting'. 

Spencer's role in his memorial to Daphne is predictably ambiguous. He is uncharacteristically well dressed, Daphne's influence on his appearance having been a great success, and he sits with his hands in his lap like a child. He is physically much narrower than Daphne and in many ways appears as a child dressed up for a smart occasion. Yet his dress and posture mirror that of his father, bringing to mind thoughts of the artist as an older man. The result of this agelessness allows Spencer to take part in all possible permutations of the memories that this painting conjures up. The artist summarised the encompassing nature of the painting in a letter to the original owner, F.C. Lyons, dated 6th November 1957: 'It is based on an early memory of our home life and the coming through the years to a more modern life at the bottom of the painting'. (Keith Bell, London, 1992, p.514).