Charles Spencelayh

Sam Cowan Esq. until at least 1978;
Sir Basil Goulding, Bt, Dublin, sold by his executors, Christie's, London, 26 November 1982, lot 224;
Private collection

Aubrey Noakes, Charles Spencelayh and his Paintings, 1978, unpaginated, illus. pl. 153 as A Thump

STRUCTURE The canvas has been relined. The surface is in generally good overall condition, fine detail, clean and ready to hang. ULTRAVIOLET LIGHT UV reveals an opaque uneven varnish which makes the reading difficult to interpret. There are a few very minor flecks of fluorescence along the right edge, to the figure and to the bricks, some of which may be old retouching. FRAME Held in a gilt plaster frame. Please telephone the department on 020 7293 5381 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
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There has been some deliberation regarding the title of this picture. In his monograph on Spencelayh's work, in which the picture is illustrated, Aubrey Noakes states that the picture is called A Thump. Whilst this might be a misreading of the title as given on an old hand-written label attached to the reverse of the frame, it is possible that the 'thump' refers to the catastrophic drop in the economy in 1929. Although the Stock Market Crash of 1929 was centred on Wall Street in New York, the devastation was felt across the world. The 1920s had been a decade of wealth and extravagance when people made vast fortunes on the stock market but in 1929 this was all brought to an abrupt end and led to a ten-year slump. Spencelayh's painting depicts an old man dressed in a mink coat and silk top-hat, extravagant purchases that he may learn to regret. His face is wrinkled in anguish as he bites hard on his cigar and his knuckles turn white as he reads the news of the crash in The Financier newspaper. Spencelayh was an artist who had known the hardships of fluctuating economies on his own household and poverty had been the subject of several pictures. No Assets depicts another old man contemplating his lack of money with not even a match to light his clay pipe, whilst Economy painted in 1914 shows a man surrounded by the contents of his pockets searching for the last of his coins. There is humour in the tragedy and despite the serious subject of The Slump the painting captures a cynicism.

The quality of the painting of wrinkled skin, glossy new fur and crumpled newspaper is superb and demonstrates Spencelayh's technical brilliance learnt when he trained as a painter of miniatures.